So on Sunday I got ordained to the sacred order of the diaconate, at which point "His Wormliness" became "The Reverend Deacon." I'm not sure it's entirely sunk in, but there were several interesting things that happened in the immediate aftermath.
His Wormliness?
At the reception, I was talking to several people and found my hand slipping up to my collar - where I searched for the black electrical tape to signify my wormliness - and when I didn't feel it, my first thought was, "Dang, it moved around under the collar." And then, "Oh. Right..... Whoa."
Etiquette
The second interesting thing was learning the proper table etiquette of the pectoral cross wearing crowd. I sat at a well-decorated, well-spread table, diggining in to the fantastic food the people from church had prepared, and someone asked for something. I raised up slightly out of my chair to hand this person something across the table, and my pectoral cross does a 10 point swan dive into the turkey gravy, then swims halfway across the puddle before I get a chance to pull it out. Fr. Rich and Dcn. Joshua, both turn to me and say, "Pocket," while showing me that they had performed the brilliant move of putting the cross into the pocket of the clergy shirt. I learned my lesson.
Got Oil?
After most of the people had left the reception, Fr. Rich asked me to pray for him, for healing. Since one of the ministries of the Deacon is to annoint and pray for the sick, I pulled out the beautiful oil stock I had received as a gift and annointed the padre. Ok, now that was weird. I've prayed for people before, but it's always been with the padre annointing, and the W/o.R.M. doing the praying. Never before did the W/o.R.M. get to annoint. It felt scandalous somehow.
Then, later on, I went to pray for Steve B., since he was sick and wanted prayer. He told me that as soon as I was ordained, he wanted to be prayed for, so I made sure to do that. I took him aside, and again pulled out the oil stock. This time the annointing part didn't seem so weird, but Stevie laughed at me. That's right. I annoint him to pray for him, and the bugger laughs at me. I think it was weird to him too. Suddenly "His Wormliness" becomes "The Deek," and gets to smear oil on his forehead; I suppose I'd laugh too if I were him.
The Reverend Deacon?
Finally, after a brief nap, my sister and I got up so that I could take her to the airport. In the car, I suddenly start chuckling, and she asks, "What are you laughing about?" I say, "Reverend Deacon Michael? Seriously, who is this guy? I don't think I know him. ... The Irreverend Deacon, now him I know..." But then, I guess that's the whole point of it isn't it? Just before the ceremony, the Bishop asked me if I was ready, and I said, "Will I ever be?" To which he responded, "That's the whole point."
God is good, gracious and merciful.
Thanks be to God.