The Discernment of Goods...and Honestly It Sucks

As I sit in our common space, the only one awake in our house, since that's when I blog the most, I'm finding myself in quite the conundrum...and...I have to blame Re-O (Re-Orientation - a halfway orientation/retreat for JVs). While Re-O really rocked me and I rode the struggle bus for a while for a number of reasons, it was still wicked awesome and I really enjoyed going and being challenged, learning, and of course seeing tons of people and spending time with them. However, that learning/being challenged part...messed with me pretty hard and now discernment is something I'm wading through again...except this time it isn't priesthood vs married life...

So we learned about the pastoral cycle which starts with experience which is then looked at through the lens of social analysis which reveals various structures that cause injustices and what not and that is followed by theological reflection in which one's faith (both religious and personal) is applied as an additional lens. This is then followed up with discernment which is trying to figure out what we are supposed to do in regards to that theological reflection which finally leads to action which I think is pretty self-explanatory. 

So in the discernment piece we had to talk about vocations (for those who know my vocational struggles in college...no I'm not reconsidering the priesthood/joining the Edmundites...although they are awesome and recommend anyone feeling called to priesthood/religious life to check 'em out) and were given a couple of excellent definitions which I wish I came across earlier,

"God's dream for your life developing in your imagination."

and

"God calls you to the place where your deep gladness and the world's hunger meet"

~Fredrich Buechner

So those make sense and so far so good. And then as I was talking with a friend of mine about thoughts we had at that point in the retreat and I realized something...something that never occurred to me before in the context of social justice and this pastoral cycle. My brother is a part of a population, a community of people, who are not only oppressed and experience injustice but are considered total outcasts in society...all because that community (and they truly are a community, united in hardship) struggles with Autism. That felt like a sucker punch in the gut. I had left home, traveled almost 2000 miles to put my faith into action when I could have been (SHOULD have been) doing that in my fucking backyard. Immediately, I felt guilt and rightfully so. Granted I had grown up with my brother for almost my entire life considering we are only a year and a half a part in age. Consequently, living in the presence of Autism was all I knew, that was normal and as a result didn't even think twice of all the difficulties my family experienced with that both socially and structurally (in education, services, government, health, etc). In the words of the band Rehab in their song Guilty, 

"...If being dirty is a crime

I am filthy, I am guilty

Of everything I've ever said or done

I am filthy, I am guilty

And I am guilty."

I'm guilty of being shaped, formed, and transformed by my brother and those with Autism in such a positive way and I've hardly given back. I've shared the insight and compassion they've given me on retreats in college, with others I've encountered, but I've hardly given back to the Autism community...and that's because I didn't want to acknowledge that part of my life and all of the struggles that are associated with it that I can't even begin to explain...but at Re-O this realization occurred...I've read a number of excellent books of people working with people they are passionate about, who they truly love and want to help. In Tattoos on the Heart, Gregory Boyle works with gang members and those who've faced the American Incarceration system. In Irresistible Revolution the author works with a variety of people in his community in Philadelphia, and in Mitch Albom's have a little faith: a true story a pastor with a past, Henry Covington works with the homeless in Detroit. All of these people of God, just everyday people stepping up to the call of Christ and emulating Christ in such a beautiful way. Not saying I'm Christ-like or anything even remotely close to that (cause I'm definitely not...far from actually) but the people I am passionate about, those whose hurt I understand in a very real way...is the Autism Community. 

And now I'm stuck in a hard but good place. Ever since I was student rector on the Emmaus Retreat my senior year of college I wanted to be a Campus Minister. I had such a passion for helping my peers find God in their lives...and now...at the same time...I want to work with the Autism Community. And their is a feather-weights difference between the two...and my scales are not tuned enough to detect the difference. So I'm having trouble discerning between two goods so to some degree there is no "bad" choice which is nice. But that doesn't change the fact that the discernment is difficult and I'd love to do both but I don't see how I can perform both options to their full potential at the same time. But hey no one ever said discernment was easy...so I guess this is the beginning of Discernment Part II where I try to find my deep gladness and use it to feed the world's hunger.