Who I am, what I am called to do, and why I want to pursue training at the Seattle School is one of the most incredibly, beautiful, daunting, impossible, frustrating, fulfilling, and terrorizing prompts I’ve written on in my 25 years on earth. However, my ego powered me through countless now deleted drafts, convincing I could write the perfect paper. In this mania, I somehow found time a space to reflect. As I wrote and reflected and cried and laughed and panicked and drank unsafe amounts of coffee to come up with the perfect essay, something broke through the mania and helped me somehow manage to loosen my grip on perfection and just write. As my approach relaxed, the Spirit (or the caffeine) began to illuminate a intricately interwoven theme in the fabric that makes up who I am, what I feel called to do, and why I want to train at The Seattle School; Where I come from is inextricably connected to where I’m going. I grew up in a lower middle-class neighborhood in Tacoma, the youngest of three children, born to evangelical parents. My father Frank, moved to Tacoma in 1972 from Hawaii on a college football …show more content…
The difference is, I have realized I don’t hate ministry, I hate organized ministry that has unneeded theological boundaries, hierarchical buzzkills, fundamentalist-founded shame, and carries a heavy, deadening burden to be more than human. I’m excited to learn how the definition of vocational ministry might be reimagined for myself in the next two years at The Seattle School. Though I know much work, pain, and patience stand in the gap, I know deep in my spirit that the unique image of God placed in my soul from eternity’s genesis is beginning to own it’s voice and announce it’s arrival and I pray that The Seattle School will be a teacher, friend and witness to that