Between the Frying Pan and the Fire: The Intermundia of Clergy Transitioning out of Parish Ministry

Between the Frying Pan and the Fire is an examination of vocational Orphanhood, a call to being an orphan, specifically of clergy who have made or are making a transition out of parish ministry into mainstream life. Definitions of vocation are themselves often distinguished by an affinity with the divine. Being between worlds, intermundia is synonymous with notions of Abyss and Void. Seen in this light, the dynamic images of intermundia, abyss, and Void are understood as that from which potentials might emanate and to which they might return.
Our work, this piece on clergy in intermundia, is itself abyss, Void, intermundia, orphan, vagrant, foreigner/stranger, and alien, deconstructed in its own collapse, its own folding and unfolding. Utilizing a praxis of anamnesis, unforgetting, we deconstruct the deconstruction by approaching this piece Orphically. Through anamnesis, this deconstructive text of re-gard, which in effect is what we both are and do when we realize we are intermundia, re-calls for us the fact that we have forgotten we are ourselves Orphan: outlaw, pervert (thoroughly, entirely, to destruction turned around or turned the wrong way), vagrant, adventurer, hooligan, intermundianaut.
Through a praxis of alchemical hermeneutics, this study researches phenomenologically seven members of the clergy who made the transition out of their respective calls to parish ministry to engage the world as part of the mainstream and find themselves between worlds, intermundia. From their portraits, this study moves into re-search through reflection upon their engagement with the numinous through a series of transference dialogues, extending beneath both the complexity of our knowledge and the knowledge of our complexity enfolded by fantasy and reverie. It is an attempt to process the material through an imaginal approach using an alchemical hermeneutic methodology.
An epilogue offers a proposal for an interventionless approach to the intermundia of clergy transitioning out of parish ministry. It is hoped that through this study some transformation might occur. Engagement with this material offers an experience of an anamnestic shift occurring within our own psyches as the voice of the vocational Orphan makes itself heard within these pages.
Finally, a look back-a regard-at and for the material, present thoughts, reflections and a forward gaze are presented in a new afterword.