A call: One size fits all?

I've been reading Nora Gallagher's Practicing Resurrection, and a quote I read today set me thinking (the rest of the quotes, which also set me thinking, are gathered from various places throughout the book). (For a bit of background, the book is an autobiography of the portion of the author's life in which she was finding out if she was meant to be a priest in the Episcopal church. This quote comes near the end of her year of interviews, ministry and meeting with her "discernment committee.")

I was no longer afraid of the members of the commission, but of 'the call' itself. Timothy urged me to be as clear as I could be about its shape and nature and then see how it matched up to what was available in the world, not the reverse.

Extended metaphors tend to carry me away at times, so bear with me on this one:

A call, or calling, in life can be seen as a suit of clothes (not a tux, but any set of clothes, enough to cover the whole body). Many of us find something on the rack that fits well enough, is fairly affordable and go with it. We take what's available and often do not know our own shape, our measurements or what might fit us best. We don't realize that we don't have to buy a ready-to-wear call; there is a designer who will measure and fit each one of us, and build clothing to fit our unique shapes. We do not know, or do not remember, the feeling of clothing made to drape and flow perfectly over our bodies, the sort of clothing that fits, flatters and almost disappears because it is so well suited to our form.

"Every single one of us has 'good work' to do in life," said Elizabeth O'Connor, a layperson, in her book Cry Pain, Cry Hope. "This good work not only accomplishes something needed in the world, but completes something in us."
Frederick Buechner said, "Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do. The place where God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet."

After reading this, I sat and simply allowed my mind to soak in the meaning of these words: deep gladness, deep hunger. This is a beautiful image of communion, of community, service and contentment. Since then I've been wondering, What is my deep gladness? Where is it found? How might I share this in order to perhaps assuage some of the world's deep hunger?

I haven't really verbalized this (except perhaps in one of the many diaries and journals I've kept over the years), but for some time (since I was about 15 or so) I've had a thought/feeling(/calling?) that I am meant to be a writer, to encourage others and to share with them my experiences and the way I look at the world. Not that I'm any more different (any more than each one of us is different, in our unique and similar ways) than any other person who looks at the world, but somehow I have been given the gift of articulation, at least in writing.

Writing feels like a sacrifice in the oldest meaning of the word: it is an offering, the words are placed upon an altar. Ann Jaqua said to me one day, "When you write, the words become a sacrament."

This entry feels something like writing one of those many analytical essays that I wrote so often in my college literature classes. I never really enjoyed dissecting authors' creations to fit my opinions, and I especially disliked the dissections we did during class discussions (let it be known that biology majors are not the only ones who do the dirty work). But I always found a sort of thrill in creating order from the varied writings, characters, lines and thoughts of authors, novels, poems, plays. Maybe it's the collage/compilation aspect of it all: I love fitting things together to create something new but somehow old and already known.

A calling is intensely personal, something that is supposed to fit just me, just so. But it is also fully communal, because without a community with which to share my gladness there can be no hunger, and no bread. There can be no sacrament and no gathering of two or three together to share it. I'm discovering my calling, discovering myself, just as each one is also searching out that suit of clothing that will fit him or her. We do this alone, but we can't do this alone. "We are brothers, we are sisters, we are one" (that's from a song; I don't recall which one).

I thought of us then as a community of ears, pressed to the earth, to hear the gentle footfalls of the one who is always coming into the world. He offers in place of security the adventure of longing and the fragility of love. He offers a wholeness bought at the cost of suffering. We need to be ready to leap onto that tightrope or else that love will not come. I remembered that in Genesis, God invited Adam and Eve to name the created order, not to subdue it, because naming is our human gift. In this new Eden we would be invited to name the world again, to name it anew, to name and be named, to listen and to speak, to gather up our gifts and travel toward a new Eden bought at the cost of suffering, an Eden of others.

And I'll end with this, a beautiful description of the Body of Christ, the body that breathes and lives wherever it can and especially where it cannot:

I thought, People make church; they carry with them the altar on which to place the sacrament of their lives.

Comments

[Josh]

Nice, April.

Good post as your "month" comes to an end. I needed to read/hear those words -- thanks.

God's best to you as you continue to listen to his voice and feel his tug.