Why Cleric?

Cleric is my own term for what I do; the Firefly House doesn’t really have titles, per se. About all we do is separate members from initiates, where the former is anyone who wants to hang out with us and the latter are those who have gone through a more formal process of initiation indicating their interested in deepening their spiritual practice within the House.

So, why cleric? A few reasons:

1. It means “member of the clergy,” something that accurately describes me.
2. It’s largely non-gendered. Words like priest, priestess, deacon, deaconess, abbot, abbess, etc. all have a strong tie to the gender binary. At least for me, “clergy” does not.
3. In a modern usage of the term, clerical work refers to the coordination and management of a business or place, and that describes at least a portion of what I do for the House, and
4. I’m a D&D nerd and like the long standing use of the term there to indicate a person who devotes a portion of their time to the divine. I do the same thing, though sadly I don’t receive fabulous, D&D style magical powers as a result. That would be pretty cool, though.