I know what you mean about the expectations. Early on in pastoral ministry someone gave me this question as a tool: “Am I doing this out of joy or out of fear?” If joy didn’t predominate, I had a problem. Now, sometimes the answer was honestly fear (don’t want to do XYZ, don’t think I need to, but am going to, cause this very active family will be angry if I don’t) — but I felt like asking the question helped me not hide my own motivations from myself and kept things from getting emotionally knottier than they were.

1) her talking about the use of sensory language in preaching (she actually had us smell and feel things hidden in bags and try to describe them, as well as having us use colored pencils to highlight anything we could “taste,” “smell,” “hear” in a Bible text –very Ignatian)
2) her saying she spent 2 hours every morning all week praying with and working with the text she was going to preach
3) the last sermon at our closing eucharist, which she had prepared during our week together and preached to, you know, like 12 of us in a little chapel, and which I cried the whole way through almost

I have to say, because I think of her as a preaching mentor as well, I have been saddened to watch her move (what looks like to me) further away from classical Christianity. As one who’s also sort of “left church” in the sense of being an Anglican priest no longer in a parish, her memoir resonated with me in a few parts (like: how do I go out not in clericals?? hey, nobody talks to me!) but it was sad to hear how big a part striving for approval played for her, and how in retrospect she now seems to view her move toward Christian priestly ordination as sort of the only way she had available at that point to construe what was really a more generalized pull toward God.

Of course, it’s very well written and I am glad to have read it, and whatever else she does or decides I am forever in her debt as a preacher.