THE LIFE UNCOMMON.

I sat within the walls of a church this morning, something I have neglected to do for quite some time now. It is absolutely astounding to me how strong the call to service still is within me. I wouldn't have believed it if you had told me that over the past few months, still harbored within me is this genuine urgency to do something remotely humanitarian, and at the very least, substantial with my life.
I wanted to be a priest so, so badly. Not even a priest for what was required by the Catholic faith and teachings, but for the incentives of human interaction. By that, I mean to say, the opportunity to work with so many different individuals hands-on and in a very personal, legitimate, spiritual sense. To immerse myself in the strife and joy of human beings on a very frequent basis, and to allow them to find some sort of solace and companionship in my presence.

Basically, I just want to "do good."

I guess that was a bit of my secret in high school- here's a crazy teenage girl who wants to enter the seminary. Not realistically, seeing as the Catholic church still offers very little for women who choose a religious life (Not entirely true, though. I merely speak of the pastoral responsibilities as something more engaging than life as a sister or a seminary-trained female. I wanted to be more prominent than that, I suppose. Selfish of me? Perhaps, but I've always felt as though women deserve more responsibility in the church. Hopefully, someday, that will come about.).

I think what influenced that drive the most was growing up around these men who were so very devoted to the people they served in almost every imaginable capacity. I know more priests than I can count, a large number of whom I managed to chat with again this morning. At a very young age, they became for me not only friends, but models for what I wanted to be, well-springs of the goodness I believed was within each individual and merely waiting to surface.

Over the years, that concept has been betrayed a few times, as I am sure happens with every bit of the "stuff dreams are made of." Some of these men, I feel, cheated others out of some of the joys and responsibilities they should have enjoyed. Some found heavily weighing voices more important than those whom they were supposedly responsible for serving. Some, dare I say it, simply changed, as though help and compassion simply weren't enough motivation for them any longer. I have watched these men progress, and regardless of their own transformations, I, too, have grown. I know more about myself, about the tolerances I allow around me, and how willing and open I have become to things I might have forever closed myself to. I have learned to be hurt. I have fallen in love. I have made wrong decisions, and I have ultimately learned to shape myself as the human being I desire to be. Along that path, somewhere, I found a bit of the capability and drive to be all of those things I hoped to encompass without the aide of the church. Not literally, of course, but without the legitimate sacramental notation that I once deemed essential and necessary in preserving the essence of what I wanted to be as an individual who is decent, compassionate, and eternally giving.

I continue to strive toward that, regardless of what life requires of me in order to do so.