Calling Part Two

 

Vocation does not come from willfulness…it comes from listening. Vocation comes from the Latin word, “voice” ~ Your inner voice.  Not the voice that demands with “shoulds” and “have tos”. We are taught to listen to everything and everyone but ourselves, to take all our clues about living from the people and powers around us. We listen for guidance everywhere except from within.  Vocation quite differently – not as a goal to be achieved but as a gift to be received.  Not a prize to win, rather a treasure to be found.  Parker Palmer Let Your Life Speak

How?  How do we listen to our life?  How do we let our lives sing and speak and stir us toward the next right step in embracing and embodying our calling?

Great questions!!

First, I think we need to slow down so our soul can catch up.  Our pace of life is fast, frenzied, and overflowing.  When was the last time you heard someone say, “I have so much free time!  Just endless, open calendar.”? Dallas Willard once called hurry “the great enemy of spiritual life in our day,” and urged followers of Jesus to “ruthlessly eliminate hurry.  Yet, even when we retire, we fill our days.  To push pause.  To stop.  To be and breathe.  This has always been the way God has shown up in our lives from the beginning when God blessed the seventh day, stopped creating for a moment, and rested.  That pattern is still God’s invitation to all of us.

Second, when we stop, we need to align our minds, hearts, and souls.  What is going on in your mind?  What is humming in your heart?  What is stirring in your soul?  Write this down each and every day.  I know that often we believe we must think our way through everything.  But your heart and soul have important wisdom for you.  If that sounds too much like a Hallmark card; perhaps it would help you to know that your heart has brain cells in it.  You can click here to read about this:

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/new-3-d-map-illuminates-little-brain-nerve-cells-within-heart

Third, follow your curiosity.  I believe that when we cease being curious, following the nudges of God’s grace, we quickly find ourselves feeling worn down and weary and cynical and critical.  What today would you like to know more about?  What would you like to explore?  Your life is both an art project and a science experiment.  You can test and try out new ways of being and living and sharing.  This is not to say it will be easy.  Unfortunately, there are those who benefit from the systems of the world and don’t want change.  Unfortunately, there are those in your life who feel threatened if you set aside your constant criticism and try to name/notice the good.  Unfortunately, there are those who would prefer you stay despondent on the sofa binge watching Netflix.  To live another way, to let your life speak, and let loose your curiosity will not be celebrated by everyone.

But I celebrate you.

Today, pause and listen to your life.  Then, out of that holy moment…let your life speak.  May this be more than words you read, let this be a prayer each of us lives.  Amen.

Calling Part 1

 

Yesterday, we celebrated Labor Day.  In the coming days and weeks, we will focus on the topic of calling.

 

Wait, you may say, calling?  Me? 

 

Maybe you thought calling was only for those of us with pieces of paper on our walls given by seminaries.  But I believe, as did Martin Luther in the Reformation of the 1500s, in the priesthood/ministry of all people.  You have a calling. 

I believe your calling can change in life.

I believe your calling can have seasons of growth and moments of dormancy/Sabbath or rest.

I believe your calling lasts from your first breath to your last ~ there is no finish line where you have accomplished and achieved your calling. 

I believe as author Parker Palmer writes, “From the beginning, our lives lay down clues to selfhood and vocation, though the clues may be hard to decode.  Who am I?  What is my nature?  Whose am I?” (from the great book Let Your Life Speak).

Today, I wonder if you would put on your Sherlock Holmes detective hat and listen/let your life speak to you.  What clues have been woven into the fabric of your life?  When have you felt most alive and awake this last year?  When do you lose track of time and think, “I could do this forever!”.  Your life is a canvas, an art project, and an invitation to be who God is crafting/creating/never finished. 

I celebrate your calling and pray that in the days and weeks to come we might explore how you, like Moses, are on holy ground.  Just as God called Moses to a new life (and did so late in Moses’ life!), God is inviting you to be part of what God is up to in the world today.

Prayer: God of burning bushes and blazing love, open me like Moses to You in the midst of my life right here and now.  Amen.

Labor Day

 

Today, we celebrate those who have kept their hand on the plow.  We celebrate those who have held on, especially over the last year.  We celebrate nurses and doctors who held hands of people afflicted with COVID.  We celebrate those who stock shelves in stores, the check out person who smiles as she scans our cereal asking if we found everything okay, who deliver items in brown boxes to our doorsteps.  We celebrate those who still plow the ground, those who are seeking more sustainable ways to live in harmony with the good earth, and those who grew the food we just ate or are about to eat.  We celebrate those who commune with cows and raise puppies.  We celebrate those who work as accountants and artists to hair stylists and helicopter pilots to photographers and parents/grandparents/adopted aunts and uncles to waiters/waitresses and warehouse workers and widget makers to zoologists.  From A to Z whatever work you did and still do, I celebrate you.

We celebrate those who plow through the rocky soil of injustice in our world.  Those who ask us to widen our vision of what could be when we let go of seeing the world through Pharaoh's eyes of sacristy and clinging to what is “ours”.  We celebrate parents whose office is now in spare bedrooms and whose deepest calling is trying to love children.  We celebrate those who volunteer to read with children, cook meals for the hungry, and listen to the lost/left-out/lonely.  Today, I celebrate those in our church who pull weeds, serve on teams, and find creative ways to lead.  I celebrate you, each of you.  I celebrate the ways you faithfully seek to embody the priesthood and ministry of all believers.  I celebrate that sometimes our profession and passion are the same thing; we recognize, realize that sometimes your paycheck paid the bills so that you could let your light shine in other ways. 

Today, I invite you to hear God whispering to you, “Beloved, thank you.  Thank you for the work of your hands, hearts, heads, and whole self.  Thank you for letting your light shine and letting Me move through you.  Thank you for what was.  Thank you for what is today.  Thank you for what will be in the months and year to come.”

Know that God’s love is not earned through our labor.  Rather, our labor is a response and prayerful way to share God’s love in this world.  Take a moment and share in the comments BOTH a celebration of your work and where God’s love is let loose in you for the sake of the world.  For example, I celebrate my work as your pastor.  I celebrate the labor of love in raising teenagers.  I celebrate the work of my soul ~ writing, teaching, and sharing God’s presence. 

Now…it’s your turn. 

On this Labor Day, thank you for being you…you are a blessing.

Prayerful Friday

 

God of yesterday, this day, and all the days to come,

Thank you for the ways Your presence is found in our lives.  Thank you for waking us up and getting us up and guiding us through the wilderness of life called, "2021".

Here we are on the threshold of September ~ it is like a second New Year.  Kids settling into school.  College campuses full of energy and hope.  The world enters a new season as creation turns toward Fall.

What season is my soul in, O God?

Is there a spring time of new growth with an idea or relationship in my life?

Is there a summer of growing through reading or discussion or relationships in the soil of my soul?

Is there an autumn of harvest, seeing seeds planted long ago starting to bear fruit?

Is there a winter where something is ending or even laying dormant beneath a layer of frost?

September can be sacred when we enter this month like a young child into school ready to learn and grow and challenge and be changed.  This month can be like a second New Year as we settle into September.

Why God do we believe as adults we stop needing to shift and stretch?  Why do we think a piece of paper on the wall ceased our education?

The world, this world right now, is still a classroom full of opportunities and options to hear more about how discrimination has hurt African-Americans and LGBTQ friends and women.  This world, right now is a classroom preparing us for what is to come tomorrow.  This world can help us if we are willing to admit we are always and forever beginners never finished.

Help me, in all the seasons of my soul right now this September, to be open to You, O professor and passionate tender of my mind, heart, soul, and whole life.  Let me love You and others as Your love so saturates me today.

Alleluia and Amen.  

Thoughtful Thursday

 

Yesterday, I offered a quote from Jon Acuff to "Forgive your former self; Enjoy your present self; and Be kind to your future self."

Today I want to let that thought continue to roam and rummage around your life.  

What was your initial reaction?  Where did your rational and reasonable mind yell, "Objection! That sounds too simplistic for the complexity of today!"  Or where did your heart want to say, "I am just not sure I can let go of that past pain someone caused...after all it has been fueling and feeding my life for so long."  Or where did your soul say, "I will totally forgive and enjoy and be kind over the weekend or after that event."  We can dismiss and deny and delay taking the initial steps of healing in so many creative ways!

Perhaps too often the biggest obstacle to living God's grace is our own minds that want us to either earn grace (which we can't because it's free) or wants us to offer our religious resume as proof of our goodness or because the soundtrack of our faith is that great camp hymn, "They will know we are Christian by our love."  Which I agree with that hymn, but I also think the song suggests that everything is up to us rather than the reality of our reliance on God first and last.  God's grace gets us through.  God's love picks us up.  God's presence moves in our life causing us to forgive, enjoy, and be kind.

Finally, we do all of this because it is part of the Great Commandment to love God as you love yourself.  So many people today don't love themselves.  The pain around us is so evident that it does impact us.  It is hard to love ourselves while still holding grudges.  It is difficult to love ourselves when we think the world around us is going to you-know-where.  It is impossible to love ourselves if we think God has left the building and there is no hope for tomorrow.

Forgive yourself - God already has.

Enjoy this moment - God is right here.

Be kind to your future self - because grace and love are part of what is guiding you to the next moment.

I pray that these words will work and wiggle in your life with an unconditional and unceasing movement of the Holy hovering and humming in amazing ways.  Amen.  

Wisdom for Wednesday

 

Recently I heard this great quote from Jon Acuff:

Forgive your former self; Enjoy your present self; Be kind to your future self

I find these three invitation to be wisdom for this Wednesday and first day of September.  So much of what lives rent-free in our minds comes from the past.  Things we said or did.  Things we didn't say or didn't do.  Something someone else said or did.  Past words and actions can play on an endless loop in our minds.  We wrestle with what could have been or should have been or the "if only" scenarios.  To be sure, I should be accountable and responsible for mistakes.  Yet, most of the time, we hold ourselves so accountable and responsible that even Jesus himself could not clear the bar of perfection we are trying to jump over.  On top of that, many times the things we carry are because we cannot reconcile the relationship with the other person.  Perhaps the other person is no longer in our lives or the woundedness between us has created a chasm and canyon.  Or I often carry around the words of politics so frustrated by the way our leaders are acting.  Or what some other pastor said that I don't believe is being faithful to the way of Jesus.  That brokenness, while it causes my heart to break and soul to ache, isn't going to be resolved any time soon.  No political leaders are texting me.  No pastor of another church is seeking my insights.  I need to forgive so that I am not continually scratching at the scar of hurt on my soul.  Forgiveness is a process ~ each day releasing the way the hurt is controlling my words/actions.  In doing so, I can allow God's grace to have the first, middle, and last word each day in my life.  

Is there something so far this week that you could forgive yourself for?

Second, enjoy your present self.  I can hear your response from here.  Enjoy myself?  Now?  Um, in case you haven't noticed, Wes, there is a pandemic and systemic discrimination and devastation from human made wars as well as hurricanes as well as people refusing to be kind and loving to each other.  Enjoy 2021?  Not exactly easy or popular or practical.  Yet, I think too often the brokenness of the world has left us discouraged and disheartened and even despondent rather than breaking us open.  You see, I can sit back and point out all the ways that others are making errors and all the pain without every acknowledging that I am doing this to make myself feel better.  My own ego loves to be the hero or victim, but never the villain.  Yet, the deeper truth is that beauty and God's love still powerfully exist in this world.  Perhaps God's voice is getting drowned out by our constant commotion of electronics and we never hear God singing in the birds or whispering in the wind.  Creation is God's first testimony and you have soil in your soul.  Get outside to enjoy the world that God says is, "Good" and connects to the goodness/God-ness in us.

How can you enjoy today by slowly down, not gulping/gobbling a meal, or letting the sun warm your skin?

Third, be kind to your future self.  You do this by the decisions you make today.  If you can forgive a past pain, maybe you don't pass it along.  If you can stop, breathe, and be in the moment perhaps you won't say something you regret and need to reconcile.  Ask yourself what your future-five-days-from-now-self might say.  You know that self after your flight/fight/freeze part of your brain finally wears down and your pre-frontal cortex can take the steering wheel.  You don't have to immediately respond to a text.  You don't.  You can wait.  You don't have to instantly compose an email.  You can wait.  You can take a walk outside, breathe, and be.  Or write the response and just don't hit "send" right away.  Be kind to your future self.  

For me, this Wednesday, this is wisdom I want to live my life with...and not just today but every day this week.  Amen.

Consuming Part Two

 

Yesterday I invited you to pause prayerfully, to be aware and awake to what you were consuming ~ not just through food ~ but through your eyes, ears, heart, soul, and body.  You absorb not only the nutrients of food, you can also take in what is around you and the seas of life you are swimming and sailing.

For example, just because we can watch 24-hours of news, does that make us better informed?  Just because we can refresh Twitter every two seconds with thousands of new tweets, does that change us or help us comprehend?  

The question of what are we consuming and what is consuming us is one of the most difficult to answer.  

I am not a digital native.  I did not grow up with a smartphone in my hand.  But, I am nevertheless tethered to technology.  And all this information we consume is not neutral.  It impacts us.  It evokes and provokes and nudges us.  We may think that because we were the one clicking the mouse to read the story, we are in control...rather than realizing that an algorithm fed us that story and the business that posted it gets paid by us clicking on it.  The world we swim in is complex.  Perhaps the ways we have always treaded water no longer work to stay afloat.

To be aware of how the snippets of stories can cause us to leap to conclusions.  To be awake to how quickly something we hear causes an emotional reaction.  To stay alert to how our soul needs more space to breathe rather than rush to the next things.

Noticing and naming the weather patterns of life is important.  I wonder if the storms that have surged in our soul for the last twenty years of fear, since 9/11, have left our bodies as vulnerable as our planet?  I wonder if the eroding hatred we anonymously post on the internet is akin to the evaporation of top soil of land that has been over-farmed?  Like the earth we walk upon, our bodies are alive and showing significant signs of being overworked, overstressed, and overscheduled.  When we treat our lives, ourselves, this way...why would we treat others or the earth any differently?

Listen to God's words of love for who you are ~ not because of what you consume or comprehend or can produce.  You are loved by the Holy and nothing can separate us from God's love.  So may you and I notice what is happening within us and how it is both impacted by and impacting those who are around us.  And may it be God's love that consumes our lives this day.  Amen.