Overwhelm

Overwhelm.

I’ve come to realize it’s not a bad word. It’s not an indicator of incompetence. It’s just an emotional response to being put in a big new situation. Actually, I kind of welcome the feeling. Frankly, much of seminary has left me ‘underwhelmed,’ except for times when things have gone badly. I am ready to have my world shaken up a bit in new ways. Nothing’s really felt too new and challenging since Baghdad…

Yet here I am, at last, in a parish and in an organization, doing what I have wanted to do as a seminarian for so long, and waiting for ‘permission’ to do it until now. That alone is overwhelming.

I started working at the soup kitchen this week. My role is to pray for the group before we eat, and then sit and visit with the people while they eat. I wear a collar when I’m doing this, and most folks there are surprised to see a ‘lady priest.’ I explain I’m Presbyterian. Most of them grew up in Catholic schools. Sometimes they were asking me questions like if it was alright to get married after a divorce; other times they just talked about life growing up, and other times they just asked if I’d watch their stuff for a minute while they got seconds. I noticed that there wasn’t much talk about life as it was right now—on the street. Only about how they got there, where they hoped to be later, and questions about where I grew up and how I got to be a ‘lady priest.’

One of the young men I was chatting with, we spoke for about half an hour. At that time, a retired man who runs the food program, called me over for a minute. He cautioned me that the man I was talking to was a convicted sex offender. I was a bit startled by this. But, I thanked him for the heads-up and walked back over to visit with the man again. I wonder if I would have been able to talk with this guy and hear his story if I’d known from the start about his background? Would I have been too distrustful?


A night or two later, I had the opportunity to take a walk through our neighborhood from McCormick housing to GlobalServe quite late. Word spreads quickly, or, perhaps memories are long. I saw some of the guys from the food program, and also some of the guys I’ve given money to in the past. These guys, I’d never really talked to before. I figured in part they didn’t want to be bothered, and I also confess perhaps then I didn’t want to be bothered. However, tonight was different. We had some real conversations. I got to know names. Some asked for change and others looked like they would never ask me for change again. We talked about life on the streets, and life as a ministry student. I still got home to bed at a not-ridiculous hour.

I wonder if I should tell other folks about this experience. I wonder if I’ll get in trouble for it, since 'nice seminarians wouldn’t be out on the streets at all hours,' or something like that. I wonder how many seminarians really have ever spent much time with the street people. I wonder if I shouldn’t have shelved SeminaryAction for the year and done the Night Ministry instead. I wonder…