Priest for Self or Priest for Christ?

As a young boy, he was attracted to the priesthood. The reverence that came with it, and the cars the priests rode in. He had seen old women who couldn't walk, 'crawl' to greet young priests.
"These folks wield a lot of power", he said to himself. Invincible creatures.
But then he thought to himself, "Am I going to be a priest for self, or a priest for Christ?
A priest for self is the individual who enters the priesthood because of personal gains, or because people tell him, the 'profession' fits him.
A priest for Christ, on the other hand, is an individual with a burning passion for God's kingdom. He seeks to win souls while he works in the Lord's vineyard. This individual had a call from God.
The priest for self had no call  from God, but wants to be part of His workforce regardless.
He's still contemplating which of these personas to choose.

Measure of sprituality?

I then saw the woman move swiftly out of her line, and join the queue going to the Bishop for communion! "A christian mother!", I thought to myself.
This wasn't the first time I've seen such a move in a Catholic Church. Folks abandon queues that lead to people they feel are 'less spiritual'. It seems to me they have a hidden metric for measuring spirituality: Eucharistic Ministers < Priests < Bishops < Arch Bishops < Cardinals < The Pope.
I only wonder if spirituality can be measured. Can it?

The 'Sin' of inaction...

Are you afraid of failure? Me too -- at least until I had a sober introspection recently. I've always been reluctant to make a move,and follow up on an idea, simply because I feel I'm not 'perfect'/well prepared yet. "When at all would you be ready?",I asked myself during my reflection. Let me share a couple of my inaction with you.

In my senior year at the university, we took a course in Entrepreneurship. One of our mini projects was to write a business plan for any business of our choosing. My teammates and I targeted the transport sector, and decided to write a business plan for the cab (taxi) business. It included online booking and other such features. We FAILED to follow up on the plan and implement it -- we felt we were not ready yet (at least i thought so). Imagine the ambivalent feeling I had when I learnt of a similar idea being implemented in Nigeria now -- TaxiPark.

Another inaction of mine was not following up on an idea to develop a web/SMS-based results (grade) notification for students in my alma mater. This idea I got while doing my national service. I was not however surprised when mFriday came out with a similar app.

I can go on and on. The point I'm trying to make is that we should try even when we are not sure of the outcome. Face our fears. Inaction is devastating -- very devastating. No wonder the Confiteor (said during the Catholic Mass), has a line that goes thus, "..., in what I have done and in what I have failed to do, ..."

Join me this Saturday at the Methodist University campus in Accra, for the mother of all Barcamps in Ghana -- Barcamp Accra. Let's pledge to make efforts and thus fail so much that failure has no other choice than to let us be.

Register for Barcamp Accra here: http://barcampaccra12.eventbrite.com/