Today I am back at work (no tellings off please) and therefore back into the rhythm of starting my day with 'Pray As You Go' (PAYG), which today focussed on John 1: 19 - 28 and the question asked of John the Baptist, "who are you?" The listener was then invited to ponder how they might answer the same question, "who are you?"
Who am I? This is, so I am told, one of the key questions to which humans seek to find a satisfactory answer, and the motivator for much philosophical and religious thought.
Who am I? How do I identify, define or perceive myself?
In the time allocated, the words/phrases that popped up in my head (and which I wrote because I knew if I didn't I'd forget them, and I wanted to be able to ponder them a little more) were, in this order ...
Catriona
Woman
Jesus follower
Daughter
Sister
Minister
God-mother
One who tries her best
There were other words/phrases that I felt less comfortable to note down, not because I am ashamed of or embarrassed by them but because they felt more loaded, more conditioned by external factors than internal...
Cancer 'survivor' (this one is very loaded, I don't like the teminology and feel ambivalent about adopting it as a self-descriptor)
Pioneer (a term used by others to describe who I am and what I do, again loaded with expectations actual or perceived, my own or those of others)
Volunteer
Failure - this one needs unpacking! I don't mean that I see myself in a negative light, as someone who has failed to achieve what may reasonably be expected (though I do have moments when I feel useless, stupid and inadequate), rather I mean someone who fails, who has learned to take some risks and attempt things that may not succeed and to be (reasonably) okay with that.
In the Bible reading, the people who came to John arrived with a series of plausible answers in mind...
Are you the Messiah?
Are you Elijah?
Are you The Prophet?
To each of these, his answer was 'no'. When pressed his answer was, essentially, "I'm the one Isaiah was on about, the one crying in the wilderness...."
Whilst PAYG invited the listener to ponder what their wilderness might be, I found myself drawn instead to the 'Other People's Expectations' - the options they came to explore.
And this seemed to resonate more for me, and seemed to allow me to explore a little further the 'cancer survivor' and 'pioneer' descriptors...
At one level, it is simply a fact that, nearly six and a half years on from a not exactly great cancer diagnosis, I am disease free, fit and healthy. I have beaten the 'worst' stats I found at the time, in so far as I remain in the 'good part' - other friends have not been as fortunate, so there is inevitably a chastened optimism and residual uncertainty; long term drug side effects continue to affect daily life but at least I am here to bemoan them! But there is another level, in part of my own making, because I chose to be 'public' about the whole experience, and which is summed up in a snippet of conversation about me that I overheard whilst at a conference. One delegate had spotted me and was saying something about me to their companion. The bit I overheard was, "so is she the one that had cancer?" In that moment some vague feelings I'd had for some time coalesced... that is who I am for some (quite a lot) of people - I am "the minister who had cancer and survived"... I am, it seems, some kind of icon or trophy or possibly (for others who have a rotten experience of treatment) an expletive deleted nuisance... look, there she is, the minister who had cancer. Of course I am happy to be a 'good news story', and being able to support and 'walk alongside others' in their own journeys is a huge and rewarding privilege. But there is a weight of expectation... I have to stay well. I have to knock those odds into a cocked hat. I have to be the 'miracle' of modern medicine. Which is tough, because I have clay feet, occasional wobbles and a dread of letting people down. It has taken six years for me to reach a place where I dare to consider a long term future, and even then it remains quite tentative (but for the record, I yesterday expressed a retirement plan to be 'chaplain to cats' on a mediterranen island!).
Pioneer is a term that a wise and trusted friend uses to describe my role... the "first ordained female Baptist minister in sole pastoral charge of a church in Scotland"... still, even after seven years... Most of the time it's something to which I sit quite lightly: it doesn't make any difference day to day whether I am first or thousand-and-first. But it does prove quite weighty in the wider Scottish Baptist scene... a real sense of responsibility that, put bluntly, if I screw up that's the whole thing set back by another fifty years. Some strange tensions, times of huge isolation and loneliness, moments of intense joy, opportunities to make a difference... and to foul it all up. Not a label I would choose, not a role to which I would ever have aspired - but it is what I am.
I think where my thoughts end up is with a recognition that, "who are you" or, "who am I", is a complicated question informed by internal and external factors, context and culture.
John the Baptist saw himself as one who called out to others from a 'wilderness' (literal or metaphorical). Sometimes being this strange status of being "the first ordained woman minister (who had cancer) in sole pastoral charge of a church in Scotland" can feel a bit wilderness like but it becomes doable because in the end this is not what actually defines who I am...
I am Catriona, woman, Jesus follower, accepted and loved by God just as I am, and, ultimately, that is all that matters.
