Birthday haircut

So, I decided I need a grown-up haircut, since I'm officially over thirty today. Not bad, huh? I like it. I've been amazed, actually, how different I feel. As my mother put it, "You look like a professional instead of a girl in school." Mom's good at saying it like it is. I feel older, but also more like myself with this haircut. But then, when I wash out all the styling tomorrow morning, I may feel different yet again. Hopefully, I can look like myself without blow drying my hair every day.

I've been reading a lot of good stuff about vocation in anticipation of this birthday. I read a lot of bad stuff when I was starting Ye Olde Episcopal Discernment Process. Or I was just so stressed out by the pressure to "figure out my call" that I couldn't use any of it well. I think it was so hard for me, in part, because my hunch that I wanted to do something that had to do with God wasn't a direct translation into "Priest." It still isn't. Then, I was afraid that if I said that to anyone I would be ushered right back to my law firm job. Becoming a priest is simply a way to do the work I feel called to do. I still struggle with whether I actually want to do parish ministry. I'm going to start there, though, because it's something I know and I have student loans to pay off.

I've been rereading parts of Karen Armstrong's The Spiral Staircase, about coming out of her very rigid convent and trying to make a life for herself in the world. She wandered around a lot before she stumbled on who she really was, which was not a priest, nun, or a married person, in the end. She actually did two television series (!), after being denied her PhD at Oxford and teaching high school for a few years. I also like reading her because it gets me thinking more about this book on singleness that a bunch of you have asked me to start writing. (I don't know if that will actually happen, but I like thinking about it.)

Karen Armstrong says:

we have to "follow our bliss" ... even if it seems hopelessly unfashionable and unproductive ... My "bliss" has been the study of theology. For other people it may be a career in law or politics, a marriage, a love affair, or the raising of children. But that bliss provides us with a clue: if we follow it to the end, it will take us to the heart of life. (305)