"Calling"

@melodyh_s 2014

I attended a retreat last weekend that gave me some frustration. Throughout the retreat, one proposition was asked in a hundred different ways: "Tell me how you have been called to become a pastor?" I have been so fixated on the word "calling" for days, and I have been barely able to articulate why. I keep trying to move on from this apparently minor semantics irritation because I tend to find that if I am getting too bogged down in a few choice words, it usually is an indicator of some limited understanding of my own due to immaturity, a youthful adamance over hills I ought not choose to die on.

However, I am thinking lately that the word "calling" to describe my chosen profession is indicative of a larger issue I have regarding pastoral work and my femininity. As a woman, I am constantly anxious that I need to prove that I have just as much reason to be in theological and ecclesiological conversations as the men already present. This comes from the numerous times men have manspalined scripture to me while I just stand there thinking about how little they know about the Colossians or the Greco-Roman gender hierarchy or Greek, checking off all the things they are saying that are just plain wrong. "Calling" has never been all I needed in order to even be considered to be taken seriously in my pursuit of pastoral leadership. That language completely undercuts how much I have been forced to prove myself against my gender, which has worked against me.