Adam learned about sex at an early age, through a children's book that his parents read to him on a fairly regular basis (the story goes that it was one of his favorite books). It was called Where Did I Come From? The Facts of Life Without Any Nonsense and with Illustrations. It's actually pretty entertaining, with cartoonish pictures and bits of humor thrown in. You learn a lot from it, without being terribly freaked out. (Originally published in 1973, it is now available in paperback and in an African-American edition--check out Amazon, if you're interested).
Lately I've been wondering how I got here. That's a slightly different question than where I come from, but they're definitely related. I wish there was a children's book for me: How Did I Get Here? The Facets of Life without Any Nonsense and with Illustrations. If "there" is where I come from, then how did I get "here?" It's a decent question, and as a pastor, I feel it's one for which I'm supposed to have an answer. In fact, I'm supposed to have a cute little vocational testimony all worked out--a godly story of the Spirit pulling the strands of my life together in a way that I never could have imagined and look(!) how everything worked out and came together. Look at how I've figured everything out. Instead, it's the opposite. And it's not cute. It feels more like God is pulling my life apart, unraveling it like the wrong string pulled on a frayed hem in a failed attempt to make it less ragged. How did I get here? I honestly sometimes do not know how I have become a pastor. I worry that it has been more by accident than intention, and that I've been carried along more by circumstances than the Spirit.
But why should that be a negative thing? Why is there such weight put on the call of the pastor? No one worries that someone has become a plumber or marketing executive or social worker by accident. No one sends up the white flag and surrenders. Isn't "call" more than a function of work, but also identity and geography? So what if I accidentally ended up here--can't God use that too? Does it mean I'm not supposed to be here? Does it mean I can't be open to other kinds of "call" too?
I think that Derrida would call me the "creatively adrift" pastor, and might wonder if the unknown end of my pastoral call actually deconstructs my current understanding of vocation and in the process, renews it, re-imagines it, re-configures it. (I recently finished reading Caputo's What Would Jesus Deconstruct? which I thoroughly enjoyed.) I don't know where I'm going, which serves to clarify where I am--but also question it. I'm adrift, but not in an aimless or anarchical way. I don't know where I'm going, and this deconstructs where I've been.
Now, the above sounds good in theory; quite nice, actually; a striking combination of the intelligent and poetic, almost a little T.S. Eliot-ish. Sure, a source of low-level anxiety for the one adrift, but ultimately not cause for fear or abandonment of vocation, right? Except for this: can one lead if one is creatively adrift? If Tolkien was right -- all who wander are not lost -- what of the people following the wandering leader? Is this what they signed on for? Obviously, it deconstructs our concept of leadership, but at what cost? And is it worth it?
