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Is it reasonable for someone with an esoteric vocation to consider the pastoral ministry? Of course. Is it reasonable for such a person to do so within the context of Protestantism, specifically the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America? There, I must confess, I am rather doubtful. Yes, the clergy I mentioned in “Those Who Hold the Reins” are all Orthodox priests, and it seems to me evident that the Eastern Church is the best choice for the serious Christian seeker who aspires to living a truly contemplative life.
Of course—as you say—there was Boehme, and in a chapter called “The Question of Protestantism” in his book Christianity/Islam: Perspectives on Esoteric Ecumenism”, Schuon also mentions such “saintly” figures as Gerhard Tersteegen, William Law, John Smith the Platonist, and a few other notable Protestants. But these were exceptional men even in their own time; to take them as models today, in an era when the mainstream Protestant churches have become something not even their founders would recognize, doesn’t seem to me very logical.
Your being “at home” in the Lutheran church and the fact that you’ve received the good counsel you mentioned from a Lutheran pastor are by no means irrelevant considerations, certainly, and I don’t mean to downplay these important aspects of your continuing formation. Nonetheless, I would spend my time at Yale taking a very careful, very serious look at this question. Your familiarity (and affinity) with the piety of Lutheran parishioners would doubtless make it a priori easier for you to function in their world, but would that world give you the spiritual nourishment you yourself need?
Understand, please: esoterists aren’t exactly popping up everywhere even in the Orthodox Churches! Quite the contrary, the spiritual life of the East is just as much marked overall by bhaktic sensibilities as is that life in the West, whether Catholic or Protestant; this of course is perfectly consistent with the Christian upaya, and nothing we need be surprised about. On the other hand, it’s not for nothing that the Orthodox are taught a doctrine of theosis, not for nothing that everyone in their parishes is encouraged to have a rule of prayer and to take fasting and the ascetic life seriously, not for nothing that the iconography and hymnody are manifest signs and embodiments of “another world”. Can one find such things as a Lutheran?