- Shigenori Kameoka
It's gonna take way more than this morning's six mile run to process where I am right now. It's been such a long, long path to get here, and the path ahead will be longer still. There will be rocks and there will be hills along the way, but it's gonna be a beautiful run.
As I was out running this morning, discovering new side streets in the neighborhood where I've lived for over five years, I started thinking about the many, many, many people, conversations, events, occasions, places, challenges, relationships, and teeny tiny fleeting moments that led me here. It was ten years ago that I first learned about chaplaincy, that I first began to understand what a chaplain does, and that I had that very first, primitive, embryonic notion that I wanted to do it. It took me ten years to finally start this journey towards becoming a chaplain, but I know with all my heart that it could not have possibly started any earlier. It was not time; I was not ready.
There were so many things that led me here - a lot of them were joyful, heart-opening discoveries, but let's be honest, just as many if not more of the things that led me here were painful and difficult. I have shed more than a few tears along the way, some of joy, some of sorrow. It wasn't until this morning's run that I had the mental image of all these things - beautiful, sad, happy - fitting together like puzzle pieces. And now, though the puzzle is not complete, the picture is a little more clear. The finished product is vaguely visible.
All of these little things I remember and wonder if, at the time, I knew how important they would be on this journey. I wonder if I had any idea when I experienced these things that they'd ultimately lead me to leave my job and career and go after something that I didn't just want to do, but felt called to do. Training to be a hospice volunteer, working with poor kids in Jamaica, writing in a journal, church searching for 16 years, dating an addict, traveling all over the world, fundraising, getting sick and being hospitalized three times, moving abroad, discovering trail running, talking to strangers on airplanes, working at a place I loved and doing a job I did not love, volunteering in a prison, joining a public speaking group and learning to give speeches, watching my grandmother die,becoming an aunt to the most beautiful kids on earth, learning to pray, finding yoga, taking a drum class, planting a garden, going on retreats, being pushed and pulled out of my comfort zone.... Did I have any idea when a pilot struck up a conversation with me before a flight back from LA that he was in school to be a pastor, and that just a few weeks later I'd apply to a degree program that would eventually make me a chaplain? And maybe more to the point, did he have any idea that our brief conversation would have such a life-changing impact on me? When I could barely put myself back together after breaking up with my boyfriend, the addict, did I have any idea that someday that understanding of addiction might actually be helpful in my career? Did I ever think during my 16 years of church searching that those days would lead me not only to a church but to a career?
One of the most amazingly influential aspects of this journey is the amount of support and encouragement I experienced, often times from people I didn't even know that well. For the majority of the past ten years, I did not tell a soul that chaplaincy was something I wanted to do. Not my parents, not my sisters, not my best friends. For about nine years, the only people who knew were my old roommate and my ex boyfriend. And then, recently, I started sharing this with more people. Not everyone, just a select few. And they believed in me. They believed that I could do this, and that I'd be good at it. A lot of friends, colleagues, and peers have believed in me and my abilities way more than I've believed in myself.
So now that I'm on this path, I realize that we sometimes - often times - have no idea how these seeds will grow. Everything we do, everyone we meet, everywhere we go...all of these moments and experiences carry us forward and on to the next thing. And even if we have no idea what that next thing may be, we're already preparing for it. And the world is already preparing us for it.
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