Last weekend, after recovering sufficiently from COVID a couple weeks ago (sorry about the extended posting absence: there is more content to come in the short term), I had a conversation with one of my Grove members about their back porch, and how I would be happy to help them fix it.
Over the last two years, I’ve found that this offer comes from a rather unexpected vocational expression.
This isn’t an unusual thing for me: I often provide services for folks around their homes. But during a twitter conversation about this specific connection this past weekend, I managed to succinctly sum up how this relates to my vocational work as an ADF Priest. I wrote there:
Honestly, it turns out that “random home improvement and house cleaning that improves someone’s life significantly more than the time investment for that action reasonably should” is a surprising, deep part of my priestly vocation.
These offers are not long-term engagements; they are usually single point-in-time projects, or they might happen before a specific event, or they might be in response to a particular experience or health problem a person has.
But they are almost always an identification of a small, individual project that would have an outsized impact on the individual I am working with. Sometimes a small investment can pay very large dividends.
What I’ve found is that for a lot of my friends, and a lot of Pagans in general, is that sometimes, things get overwhelming. Clutter is the enemy of many folks’ good mental health, and just as a number of small things can cause paralysis, taking just one or two small things off the plate can lead to a feeling of freedom and “room to breathe.”
I started doing this a few years ago, but I didn’t make a connection to vocation until recently. I found that by helping a friend straighten up, they were able to gain modest control over something in their lives, and that improved their ability to control other things as well.
Recently, I’ve found some time to aid a couple of people with minor house cleaning; two hours of dedicated laundry folding or tidying up here or there. It’s helped them build better relationships with their space, and find peace in an otherwise chaotic experience of keeping their home.
Last year, a person I had met once was having some health problems, and needed a handrail installed in a stairwell. I knew that the social media post was going to generate a lot of, “wish I could help!” responses, so I reached out privately and said, “If no one has agreed to do it by X day, I’ll drive out to do it for you.” I wasn’t the closest person, but I was in a position to actually do it… and sure enough, I was the only person able to accomplish the task. That one felt really, really good.
Our Grove does active service for one of our members who needs occasional help with his garden (what can we say but, gardening is sort of a thing for us Cranes). At least once per year, we schedule to go out and help weed, re-plant, and mow, and it feels really, really good. I was unable to make it this year, but I still have a plan to try and make it out and help out later in the year.
My priestly oath, of course, alludes to some of this.
I pledge to love the land, to serve the folk, and to honour the gods.
To this, I dedicate my head, my heart and my hands.
It’s a super literal interpretation to look at this and say, “Ah, it’s obvious! I’m serving the folk with my hands!” but this isn’t a way I saw my priesthood expressing itself. I thought my hands would be pouring out offerings, crafting runes, or holding open the gates between worlds. I did not see plumbing and electrical work on my horizons.
But it also makes some sense: as Pagans, we connect deeply to our home spaces. Paganism, both ancient and modern, is a religion of both the civic and domestic spheres, and keeping them in balance is a calling many of us have, I think. The only way that we can be balanced in our civic lives, though, is to be balanced in our home lives. The ability to create harmony at home is undermined when we are so overwhelmed that we can’t figure out how to start a project, even if it’s a simple one, because there is Too Much going on.
And so, this past weekend, my priestly work involved destroying and rebuilding a deck. This isn’t how I thought it would be to be a priest of the people, but it turns out that the people sometimes need a bit more than “thoughts and prayers” to get through things.
So here I am, sore knees and all, feeling radiantly fulfilled in my work.
And I wonder where the next unexpected vocational expression will come from.
