from 10/17/07

I continue to struggle with issues of my own authority. A lot of it stms from my previous experiences of authority as external. Authority is attributed by (or taken from) others. This is stuff like roles, titles, that kind of thing. I have problems with this kind of authority--I don't often trust it, and I usually look for reasons not to trust someone like this. It's probably related to my sense that a number of supposedly good institutions didn't end up being what they claimed (or what others claimed them) to be. it reminds me a little bit of Mary Tolbert's discussion of biblical authority. But I realize there's another kind of authority. It's an authority from experience and resonance, an authority that comes more from within. This is the part I struggle with--recognizing the feet i stand on and the lessons I've learned from my experience. its about knowing that I have something valuable to share.
There's another aspect that I'm still figuring out. I see others dealing with this in different ways. Some people create a professional "shell" exterior and meticulously manage the gap between the shell and their persona in the rest of their lives. This is what I have done before. It makes me feel kind of stiff, and I come across as distant and unfriendly. I think that's why it bugs me when I see other people who do that. For me this shell is a false sense of professionalism. It comes from believing I am not good enough on my own to be in the job. It comes from having unrealistic expectations of myself in the job. For me, it's a set-up for failure as I develop the appearance of authority and competency as a chaplain while maintaining a gap between myself and the chaplain I pretend to be. I perform it without inhabiting the performance. I'm trying to shift my focus from the performance of "The Chaplain" to me-as-a-chaplain. Doing this means looking at my own skills, talents, and experiences and figuring out how I am already a chaplain and how I can develop to be a better one.
Jay Johnson talks about how wearing a clergy collar makes him a giant screen that people project all kinds of things onto. This is, in a sense, what I've done to myself. In being hired as a chaplain, I throw up a bundle of projections and expectations of what "The Chaplain" should be [and more often than not, the focus is on what I am not]. These projections (from others, anyway) give me a kind of authority that makes me very cautious. Not only do I need to manage my own expectations, but I have to handle the expectations of others, which also seem pretty unrealistic. I have to act as myself in a chaplain role, alongside the projections and expectations of what "The Chaplain" should be. I guess my job is both to support and to subvert what people expect from me in doing the work I want to do.