Ordinations, Church and Wild
Reflecting on my ordination, wild ordination, and the ways that we are all called to serve.
On the weekend I had the privilege of witnessing the ordination of four candidates, and the admission of an ordained minister from another denomination, into the United Church of Canada. It was a joyous celebration filled with music and prayer, scripture and communion, as four people knelt, hands were placed upon them, and they were ordained as Ministers of Word, Sacrament and Pastoral Care. As well, it was a joy to hear Rev. Ronnie Magno, previously of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines, reaffirm the vows that he made years ago to be a servant of God in this way.
It was a thrill for me to watch the four ordinands, Junior, Cathy, Paul, and Michelle, kneel as lay people answering a call from God, and rise as ministers in their particular vocations in the service of God and God’s world. I could feel an energy throughout the entire service, moving over each of them as they spoke their vows, and over each one of us in the congregation as we sat and witnessed. It is an energy that I understand as the Holy Spirit, the palpable and empowering power and energy of God that animates and activates each one of us in our faith journeys.
‘Set Apart’
The traditional language used to explain what is happening in an ordination is that they are being ‘set apart’. It is the idea that, by becoming ministers, we are committing to something that is more than just a ‘job.’ We are, instead, given holy orders, to serve God and God’s world with all of who we are, using our gifts, our talents, our vulnerabilities, and our frailties as human beings. As someone said to me in church this Sunday, as I was chuckling about feeling like a minister, even when I’m sitting in the pews: “Well, you can’t just put it on and take it off!” Ronnie was set apart years ago at his ordination; he affirmed that place within the United Church on the weekend. Junior, Cathy, Paul, and Michelle were set apart in that service.
Indeed. What a joy it was to watch these five faithful servants commit and recommit to wearing the mantle of responsibility that comes with ordained ministry in the Christian church.
Remembering My Ordination
As I watched and worshipped at the ordination service, I remembered my own ordination, five years ago. I could viscerally remember what it felt like to kneel before the communion table, surrounded by people of the church, with my mentor and friend Paul, and my husband Mark, standing behind me, ready to lay their hands on me. And I can remember standing again, giddy and joyful from the experience of feeling the power and presence of the Holy Spirit. I was transformed in that moment. I stood up, visibly shaking; I am sure that my eyes were glowing.
I was transformed, yet, as the preacher Rev. Brian Cornelius said in his sermon at this weekend’s service, not promoted. Ordination, he cautioned with humor, “is a transformation, not a promotion!” This was important to hear, as we all laughed, because often the role of minister is seen as being a hierarchical one in our society. But believe me, I have learned over the last 5 years that it is most definitely not a promotion! It is a transformation into the servant leadership that Jesus teaches in the Gospels, and that, often, we have to learn again and again.
What is Ordination?
Ordination is the culmination of a long process of discernment and preparation in the church. One begins with a sense of a call from God, that God is calling a person to ordained ministry. That call has to be tested and discerned within a community of faith, to make sure that it is genuine, and that it is more than a sense of ‘hey, that’s a job I might like to try!’. The discernment and testing is done with committees of people within the church, other ordained ministers and lay people, asking questions and probing to see if the call is genuine. There is education required at a seminary, field placement in a variety of kinds of ministry (in a church, hospital, the community, etc.). Then there is the ordination ceremony itself, and placement in a recognized ministry within the church. This whole process takes years, and is not for the faint of heart. The candidate is encouraged to listen to God, to pray and discern throughout the process, in case they are being called to another form of ministry, outside of holy orders. I have known many people, in the United Church and in other denominations, who have been so faithful to this discernment process that, sometimes, it has led them to other ways of serving God.
Of course, the church is a human institution, and the ordination process, and the role and responsibilities of ordained clergy, have been abused over time. Women were and continue to be excluded from holy orders in some traditions. The status of clergy has been used to threaten, intimidate and abuse individuals and groups of people. There is good reason that society has become mistrustful of ‘someone in a collar’ such as myself. (Although once reason I wear a collar is because there are people, especially women and girls, who tell me, “Wow! I have never seen a woman priest before! That is so cool!” Visibility is important.)
That said, the nature and process of ordination isn’t, in itself, wrong. It is a ritual that has resonance into our deepest history as a human community, in which we recognize that some people particular gifts and skills for guiding and walking with a community in the ways of ritual, tradition, ethics, and meaning, and are thus ‘set apart’ for that work.
Wild Ordination
Victoria Loorz is ordained. She is ordained, but not in the way described above. The author of the book Wild Church: How Nature Invites Us into the Sacred (Broadleaf Books, 2021) and a co-founder of the Wild Church Network, writes about being ordained. Loorz describes a hike that she took as part of a five-day wilderness soul program intensive. On this hike, a raven accompanied her on the hike. It stayed nearby, flying along as she walked, calling out. Part of the role of the intensive she was on was to “engage in conversations with sacred Others” such as the raven, and so Loorz paid attention to the raven throughout the hike. Then, an owl also arrived, and Loorz rested and sat across from where the owl, in broad daylight, rested on a branch, looking at Loorz.
Once the owl had left, Loorz prepared to leave and go back to the group.
“Before I made it back to the trail, though, a still small voice from deep within me said, without adornment, ‘You need to be ordained by the wild.’”[1]
Loorz is a lay person in the Christian church; she had long held positions in Christian education and elsewhere. She was familiar with what ordination meant in a traditional sense. But what did it mean to be ordained by the wild?
Loorz spent some time trying to figure this out, although not in a didactic or linear way. She offers some wisdom to others who hear such a call:
“When you find yourself on the receiving end of an implausible and ridiculous call, it is a good idea to hold it closely reverently, and with tender curiosity. And don’t waste too much time trying to figure it out. The call comes from Mystery, which remains mysterious no matter what.”[2]
What, exactly is a wild ordination? What does it mean to be ordained by the wild? Loorz understands the meaning of ordination to be fundamentally what I described above. It is to be called in to service, to accept holy orders, with a ceremony that marks the vow of fidelity that the ordinand makes to the calling that God has placed upon them. With wild ordination, however, it is not an institution that is doing the ordaining:
“In wild ordination, it is the wild that calls you into service. It’s not the hierarchy. The calling comes when it comes, from whomever it comes, and at the right time. I can’t be more specific than that. Because I don’t know. Only you will know. What I do know is that we are deeply interconnected with a world yearning to be whole again.”[3]
The way that I understand it is that wild ordination is a calling from the depths of the natural world itself – the natural world that is infused with the Holy Spirit, with the presence of God – to help the world, the Earth community, come into full healing. Reminding us, as I often do, that we are a part of nature, Loorz invites us to deep reflection:
“We humans who can hear the call are urgently needed. The rainforest is calling us, the deer are calling us, the open vast sky suffering invisibly with too much carbon is calling us, the rabid fox is calling us. What is your role in this love story of reconnection, restoration, and compassion? What part of the sacred wild is calling you to be ordained into service on her behalf?”[4]
Because this is not an institutional ordination, its form of discernment and preparation is not uniform. Best described as more of an apprenticeship with the wild around us, and through a means of conversation with the natural world in which there are no wrong answers, being ordained into the wild is about committing to using all of who we are, our gifts, talents, vulnerabilities, and frailties, to help restore human relationships with the Earth community.
Such wild ordination is dangerous and liberating work; it will disrupt the status quo.[5] It is the work of discipleship, a certain kind of vowed discipleship that will take the shape of the cross for those in the Christian tradition.
We are All Called
Some of my readers are ordained clergy in the Christian church. Some are lay people, faithful to the work of the church in a range of ways. Some of my readers worship in other faith traditions, and some are not religious at all. Regardless of our roles or our faith, I believe that all of us are called to service for love and healing in the world, for the work of restoring human and Earth relationships. We are all called, I believe, to a certain kind of ordination, the ordination that comes after you have discerned what you are being asked to do with your gifts, talents, vulnerabilities, and frailties, in service to a world that is both beautiful and broken. We are all called to be set apart for the vocation of healing the world.
While I have been ordained by the church, it was as a response to God’s call on my life that goes beyond any church institution and out into the world. Whether I wear a collar or not, I have been set aside for this work, for this vocation. Indeed, I consider it my second ordination; the first one occurring on the day I received my PhD in Theology. On that day, I felt the power of the Holy Spirit descend on me. I was shaking and I was giddy and joyful; I am sure my eyes were glowing. I have been saying for ten years that being a theologian isn’t about what I do; it is about who I am and how I view the world. I have now come to understand what that means.
I have not yet been ordained into the wild, although the work that I do is a part of the wider work of bringing healing restoration to the Earth community and all of its inhabitants, human and non-human. But I wonder if that may be next. In reading Loorz’s book and reflecting on my own experiences, I do believe that I am being called into a wild ordination.
And, I believe that we are all called to a wild ordination of sorts, to the work of serving the world, of using what we have to the best of our abilities, to create healing and wholeness.
How have you been called? Have you been invited into a wild ordination? How are you called into service for the Earth? What gifts, talents, vulnerabilities, and frailties might you offer as seek restoration and wholeness for the Earth community?
[1] Victoria Loorz, Church of the Wild: How Nature Invites Us into the Sacred (Minneapolis: Broadleaf Books, 2021), 173.
[2] Ibid., 174.
[3] Ibid., 177.
[4] Ibid., 180.
[5] Ibid., 186-187.
Announcements and Coming Events
I have a few things I am up to this week, and would love for you to join me!
Talk: “Inspiring People to Take Climate Action”
Ottawa South Greens AGM, Wednesday April 19, 2023
7 – 9 pm, via Zoom.
RSVP: https://vote.greenparty.ca/rsvp/eve_5b4f08d05
Preaching: “Recognizing God in the Earth Community” (Luke 24:13-35)
Knox-St. Paul’s United Church
800 Twelfth St. East, Cornwall ON
10:00 am in person and streamed to YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@KSPUCCornwall
Any questions or comments, or to learn more? Please go to jessicahetherington.ca, or email me at: jessica@jessicahetherington.ca.
This was a beautiful reflection on Ordination and I appreciate it immensely. My own experience was not heady and glorious; in fact it was a weekend marked with trauma and devastation. However, the truth of transformation is that it sometimes is marked by intense pain. But nonetheless, we are changed.
I’m curious, how would you define ‘wild’? One of the conversations I try to have when discussing ecotheology is about embracing a broader understanding of what ‘creation’ is. I often find, when we say ‘wild’ or ‘nature’ or ‘creation’, we’re talking about the mountains and fields *out there*, neglecting our backyards and homes.
Some of this is influenced by the essay The Trouble with Wilderness, by William Cronon. Some of it is me drawing on work by Tish Harrison Warren and Native American Theology (Kidwell, Noley, and Tinker), both of which emphasize the sacredness of the place where we are.
As for my own calling, I would answer with a resounding yes! I am not traditionally ordained and probably won’t be, but I am called to use my gifts of art and gardening and caring for people and places to further God’s work of restoring relationships in this world.