Three Blind Mice
What is it about the helping profession that draws us? Why is it that most people who enter helping professions are the ones who need “helping” the most?
I have to admit, I have met some people who want to enter professions like counseling and I ask myself (but usually not them), “Now why in the world do they think someone would want to come to THEM for counseling?!” Really, I know you’re not supposed to have dual relationships in these kinds of professions, but no worry… I won’t go to most of these folks for any kind of counseling!
But then I sit down behind the desk to counsel a parishioner, and I think, “Well here’s the broken guy trying to fix someone else’s problems again!” No one is perfect, no one is whole.
I got to thinking today about the pedestal that pastors and ministers get put up on sometimes – how we’re viewed as super-beings from another spiritual universe. People think we’re perfect, when the fact is most of us are here because we are broken, too, and we have a deep longing for… something. We feel a longing to be closer to God, and somehow hope that telling other people about this God we don’t understand will somehow fill that void.
It’s not so. But the farther we get into it, the more we realize that everyone else is searching with us… at least might if we don’t start seeing ourselves on the pedestal where others have put us.
