SILENCE AT THE CROSSROADS
I have just returned to the noise and bustle of family life after a day of silence at St Michael’s Priory in Willen. I joined the wonderfully welcoming religious community at the Priory for prayers this morning and this evening, and apart from sharing lunch within them in silence, spent the day in this little retreat, overlooking a flourishing garden. The only sound was that of bird song and the occasional distant roar of a plane heading to distant destinations. What a blessing.
Whenever I have reached a crossroads in my life, I have always taken myself off on silent retreat. In the past I have spent time at Launde Abbey, The Community of the Resurrection at Mirfield and at Charney Manor. Usually I prefer to spend two or three days on silent retreat, but even a snatched day is a tonic to the soul. Before I left the world of media to join Christian charity World Vision back in 2006, I spent a week in silent retreat, something I repeated before going on to take up a global role with the charity in 2016. And I have in the past shared much valued time with friends and colleagues in partial silence in a religious community.
As someone who spends most of my life talking for a living – as a speaker, broadcaster and consultant – I have come to treasure the liberation of silence. I know that in my prayer life, I spend far too much time talking to God, telling him what he already knows, and far too little time listening to him. But cocooned in silence, it is as if I can hear him more clearly, feel his presence more nearly, and am more in contact with the very ground of my being. Sometimes I am drawn to Ignatian contemplative exercises such as the Lectio Divina, but more often I simply become still, and alert to the fact that he is God. That as I stand at the crossroads, he stands beside me.
The crossroads I now find myself at is like no other I have encountered in my life. After many years of trying to drown out God’s call, I have finally surrendered and on Monday morning I will be heading to Ely, where I will attend a Bishops Advisory Panel. This is a three day residential, at which a panel of clergy and lay advisors will seek to discern whether I am called to ordination as a priest in the Church of England, and whether I should embark on a three year part-time training course, followed by curacy.
It has taken me twelve years of procrastination, and more recently eighteen months of intense reflection, to get to this point. I first felt called to ordination when I was working in the media, but when I was offered a role with the Christian charity World Vision, I reasoned that I was off the hook. But the call persisted and eventually I trained to become an authorized preacher. However, in recent years, the call has become even more persistent and I have finally faced up to the fact that I am called to make an even deeper commitment.
Things came to a head when I left World Vision last year. I realized that I had always used my job as an excuse, and that this last hurdle had now been removed. And so over the past eighteen months I have been meeting with my Diocesan Director of Ordinands, who has skillfully guided me through a very intense discernment process which has included theological study, essay writing and some pretty deep soul searching. It has not been an easy process, but every time I erected another barrier in my mind, I would seem to meet someone or read something that would demolish my argument, to the point where all I could say was ‘Lord, your will be done.’
This does not mean that I am without doubts even now. But I do feel a deep conviction that this life that has not been restored to me, is to be used in the service of God. I have already been some amazing opportunities to ‘proclaim the works of the Lord’ and I will undoubtedly continue writing and broadcasting but I also believe that I am not meant to be a freelance ambassador for Christ. That my ministry needs to be grounded in the body of Christ. My age means that if approved for training I would be a self-supporting minister, and would continue to work, but beyond this I do not know what my ministry would look like.
Going to a Bishops Advisory Panel is unlike anything else I have experienced. It is not an interview, which you pass or fail. Rather it is a time to collectively discern God’s call, which may be to ordination, but which may also be to some other form of lay ministry.
So today I stood in silence at the crossroads, and what I was granted in the stillness was a sense of peace, that whatever the outcome of the Bishops Advisory Panel will be His will. That he will ‘show me the right path . . . and point out the road for me to follow.’ (Psalm 25: 4).
Kate Nicholas’s best-selling memoir Sea Changed is available at Waterstones and Christian books stores across the UK and online at eden.co.uk and Amazon worldwide. Her latest book Sea Changed: A Companion Guide - Living a Transformed Life will release in the UK on 2nd July.