My Personal Statement of Ministry

I have to write a personal statement of ministry for my manual to finish out my seminary education.  I decided that I really don't know what I will do with my ministry.  I want to do something with it, but I have no idea what.  So I found a piece about the rules for being human and I thought that I would write my statement of ministry around that.  So here goes.

When I applied to the New Seminary to become a student, I had no idea what I would do with an ordination from an interfaith seminary.  I had been thinking about applying for years, but had only now just followed through.  Now here it is two years later and I am faced with my impending ordination and I am still trying to figure out what I want to do with my ministry.  No, that isn't true.  I know what I want to do with my ministry, I just don't know how to go about doing it.  I want to use my skills and talents as a minister to help people remember the rules for being human. 

Dr. Cherie Carter-Scott is a motivational speaker and life coach.  She has concisely written out 10 rules to being human.  I recieved a copy of these rules many years ago, and incorporated them into a book of inspirations that I keep handy.  I recently rediscovered them, and found that while I hadn't read this list of rules in a while, all the precepts I had discovered about finding my own happiness and my own centeredness involved these 10 rules.  They also appear over and over in the many religious teachings from around the globe.  My ministry is going to center around helping others remember the rules for being human, to follow those rules myself to the best of my ability and to help others learn to follow them as well.

The first rule is that as a human you will receive a body.  This physical manifestation of self is partially decided by genetics, partially decided by eating and exercise habits, and partially decided by what ever modifications and alterations one decides to make through surgery and other cosmetic practices.  However this is the only body you will have in this human life.  My ministry will work toward helping myself and others feel comfortable in their own physical skin.  I want to help myself and others find the beauty that exists within the body they have been provided, regardless of how it stands up to societal standards of beauty and physical fitness.  I want to help myself and others desire to keep their bodies in the best shape they can as the body is necessary to carry out the work of the Divine, Great Spirit.

The second rule is that you will learn lessons.  Sometimes lessons come from formal education.  Sometimes lessons come from life.  But from the day you are born to the day you die, you will learn lessons.  My ministry will be set up to help myself and others look for the daily lessons that come to us.  These lessons may come in the form of grief, sadness and pain.  These lessons may come in the form of great joy, pleasure and good health.  Regardless of the form, we have much to learn so that as a society we can bond more fully, working toward nirvana.  I will do my best in my ministry to help bring those lessons to light in the lives of myself and those who come to me for counsel.

The third rule of being human is that there are no mistakes, only lessons.  This has been extremely hard for me to learn as a deeply-seeded fear of failure has been with me for as long as I can remember.  I do not like to feel as though I have failed, especially when that failure involves others.  I am learning that failure is a step on the road to success as it teaches us what NOT to do.  My ministry will involve ensuring that I continue the process of learning from my mistakes and helping others to recognize the positive lessons from their own mistakes.  My ministry will promote the idea that mistake is not equivalent to flaw.  A mistake is not something to fear.  It is a learning opportunity and chance to show grace and power in a difficult time.  My ministry will be designed to be a place for those that feel imperfect to find their own personal perfection.

Dr. Carter-Scott identifies the fourth rule as lessons will be repeated again and again until they are learned.  Every spiritual master I have encountered in the last several years has repeated the exact same sentiment.  I am still finding myself repeating patterns and bad habits as I learn the lessons of the Divine and of this human existence.  My ministry will do it's best to help those who are ready to learn the lessons from the patterns and habits they can't seem to break, discover and learn the lessons being presented to them.  I will not force people to learn their lessons, but if they come to me wanting to break the cycles in which they seem to be caught, I will with my ministry do my best to help them and myself discern the lessons and work with them to find a way to incorporate those lessons into their lives.

Learning does not end, is the next rule for being human.  Once you have mastered one lesson, there is another waiting to be learned.  Life is a constant learning experience.  My ministry will be to facilitate and support the constant growth and learning in my own life and the lives of those who choose to walk with me on this path.

The sixth rule of being human is that "there" is no better than "here."  I know from my own experience that life always looks better in another place.  Someone else always has something I want and don't have.  Much like the first rule, this rule is about acceptance of what you have and being happy just where you are.  My ministry will strive to help myself and others feel good about their station in life.  My ministry will be in support of meeting people where they are and removing the need to match up to the society expectation of success by helping them (and me) to feel successful in the place where they are.

Dr. Carter-Scott's seventh rule is the one I have found most challenging in my life.  It says, others are merely mirrors of you.  The idea is that what you love or hate about someone else is a reflection of what you love or hate about yourself.  This lesson has come up for me in various forms over the last couple of years from many teachers.  And I have found that it has been a very difficult, yet very true lesson for me to learn.  Many times, I have blinded myself to the lessons reflected in the mirror of my friends and family.  I have projected my own feelings of love and hate onto others insisting that they deal with them, rather than dealing with them inside myself.  By that same token, I have taken the judgment and love projected from others onto myself and tried to fix me so that they could be happy, ignoring the fact that their love/hate is actually more related to something inside them.  My ministry will work toward building my own self-awareness and recognizing my own reflection in the way I feel about others, and will aid those that come to me in building their own self-awareness.

It has gotten so easy in society today to pass the blame to others when it comes to making something of yourself.  When failure strikes it is easy to point the finger.   The eighth rule of being human is to recognize that what you make of your life is up to you.  I know that I spent years blaming my unhappy career choices on feelings of pressure and expectations from someone outside of me.  But in reality, I was the one who made the decision for this career.  I am the one who chose to take these steps.  My ministry will support people in taking responsibility for their lives, and helping them to build themselves in to what they truly aspire to be.  I hope some day to be able to do this in a role that is more than just as a sounding board or as someone who has "been there, done that" but for the moment, I will be the cheerleader that cheers myself and others toward building the life that they want to live.

The ninth rule is that your answers lie inside you.  The first thing my spiritual counselor every asked me was, are you being true to you?  I had to tell her no, and I had to explain that I didn't know what being true to me really entailed.  Here I am nearly 7 years later, only just discovering that the answers really do lie inside of me.  That I just have to look for them and trust myself to know what is true to me.  Tuning out pressure from society and family and peers is really hard.  I want to build a ministry that supports people, including myself, to learn to trust that still small voice that always knows what is right.

The final rule of being human is that you will forget all of this.  Each new lesson will start with having to relearn and remember the previous 9 rules over and over.  My ministry will be a space where the rules will be available to be relearned in a way that is supportive and non-judgmental of the fact that perhaps these rules were once known.

I know that this document is intended to be about how we plan on putting our ministry into practice.  And for the moment, I can't say how my ministry will manifest itself in my life.  I just know that my ministry is to center around helping myself and those that find me to be the best humans they can be. 

I will do some marketing by promoting my desire to offer unique services to people so that they can have the ceremonies that fit them as they mark off milestones in their lives.  I hope to begin to build a community of like minded people for discussion and lessons on being human and recognizing that inner spiritualness.  But mostly, I will be journeying to listen to my own inner voice, and allowing my energy to draw to me the people that want my particular brand of help to find their own inner voice.

My ministry will mostly be to live my life by being the change I want to see in the world.  If others choose to join me on this path for a time, I will welcome them and offer all the support I can to give them the confidence they need to be the change they want to see in the world.