A Vocation of One's Own

Sometimes I hate my job because it means that I am the only non-specialist in a world full of experts. I was not made to function as a maid of all work. I'm not a generalist by nature. I want to throw myself into some highly-specialized, creative and desperately needed, utterly meaningful work of my own. 

I've said it before and I've said it again: I want to be George MacDonald and Amy Carmichael smushed together into one person. This is who I am. You figure it out. 

She sees the realities of this world and alleviates human suffering with a sacrificial love. 

He sees the realities of the world to come and communicates them to others with the creative power of his soul. 

I need a vocation. 


This thought that is getting me through the desert of now:

"His Kingdom is Upside Down and in Him your part is large and lovely and needed and art."

Surely, I was created to be more than a Teacher's Assistant.

Open Thou Our Lips: On Detachment pt. 2

     About a week ago, on Saturday morning, I woke up, dressed, and walked outside into the grey light of day. I intended to spend the day doing some deep cleaning in my old apartment, and hoped to make progress with deciding where to store my belongings. While I was walking toward the bus stop, I noticed a bitter, burning smell in the air. As I approached the intersection, I saw firefighters and police officers using their vehicles to block off the street, cautiously dismantling a burnt vehicle as they stood on scraps of charred metal. Because it would have been impossible for the bus to pick me up from that stop, I decided to start walking. To walk from my house to my old apartment would take over an hour, but there was nothing else to be done.
            I pounded down the sidewalk with my arms crossed over me, trying to keep out the surprisingly cold wind. As I walked, I reflected on my lack of motivation. Why should I have to spend my Saturday cleaning a home that was no longer mine? Why should I have to pack and divide my belongings, to store them at cost until I could find another opportunity to live in the way I desired? As I walked, I grew angrier and more frustrated, feeling nothing but the injustice of my situation, feeling trapped in a whirlwind of circumstance.
            I realized, suddenly, that I could not say, with Kathleen Norris, that the thing happening to me was the thing I desired. This was a sobering realization. I remembered her advice about how to adopt an attitude, how to inhale a spirit, of detachment. There was only one method: prayer. So, as I walked down long grey sidewalks, wondering how long until I made it home, I prayed. Because God had already begun the work of detachment in my heart, I felt able to pray for this. I prayed that God would enable me to choose rightly, that he would show me whether I should keep my belongings, and that he would help my heart to release all the things I wanted to keep.
            As I prayed, I noticed a few things. First, I didn’t feel angry or burdened anymore. Second, this release of distress came with the decision to give away and/or sell my belongings to the girl I replaced in my new house, because she is swapping lives with me, and moving into her very first apartment, which she will share with one other person. The deep surprise of this moment, I think, was the absence of pain. I felt certain that this is what I wanted to do, not just what I ought to do, and I felt free from the burdens of my own emotions. Finally, after about 40 minutes of walking, the bus came. I reached the apartment, did some cleaning, and when my old roommate returned, I told her what I had decided. The girl who is taking my things came over that afternoon and together, we walked around the apartment as she evaluated what she could use. Instead of feeling like a mother selling her children in a market stall, I found it easy to extol the merits of my sofa, the comfortable, attractive, brown-suede couch that I had cried over purchasing a year ago, because furniture is so adult and I’m afraid of money.
            I think I’m keeping my kitchen supplies: dishes, pots, and pans, because I can store them in the garages of a few family friends and they will keep until I need them, if I need them, again. But we will see about that, I suppose, because the goal is to “be free from wanting certain things to happen.” It is amazing how many things I no longer own.
            God never forces us to do anything we don’t want to do. Why? Because He loves our yes.

“Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things, and give me life in your ways.”

Open Thou Our Lips: On Detachment

Detachment:

"Being free from wanting certain things to happen, and remaining so trusting of God that what is happening will be the thing you want and you will be at peace with all."
 --Kathleen Norris and Dorotheus of Gaza

I want to contemplate the virtue of detachment. A few weeks ago, a friend read me the chapter on detachment from Kathleen Norris' book Amazing Grace. This topic strikes me as appropriate not only for Lent, but also for the season of life I'm entering. My current roommate, who is one of the best and most beloved roommates I have ever had, got married about a month ago. Because all the other women I know are married or live with their parents, I could not find a roommate to share my lovely, comfortable, quiet hermitage. So, even though I had just reached the stage of early adult life where I owned furniture, had utility bills in my name, and could throw dinner parties with real dishes and silverware, I had to pack up and leave.

I'm not just sad because my dear roommate is moving over lands and seas, but also because I am giving up the place that has been my only home for the last two years. During the seven years I spent in college, I longed for a space of my own. I kept boxes of pretty dishes and table linens given to me by family friends, waiting for the time I would be able to use them. I glory in domesticity. I love having my own kitchen. I love deciding what color of paint goes on the wall, and not having to resign myself to an ugly wall-hanging because everyone else thinks it looks lovely in the living room.

It's hard to give up something that you are actually grateful for. I've prayed about this move many, many times, mostly using words like "Jesus, please, please, please, can I stay?" But even while I prayed for this, I knew that I really needed to pray that my heart would be aligned to the will of God. It's scary to feel desire clutching your heart in its fingers, controlling the rhythm of its pulse. I made a thorough search for anyone female, Jesus-following, and non-crazy. I did not find a roommate. I did not, do not, feel "free from wanting certain things to happen."
 
Instead of finding one roommate, I found five. On Saturday, I moved into an intentional community house. Most of the women who have lived there left behind piles of belongings: stacks of books, mattresses, luggage, mismatched dishes, and shabby furniture, so there is no room for my treasured belongings. I'm ashamed to admit how much this upsets me, but that is the case. The women are all wonderful people, lovers of God, and so good to me. The house has a lovely quirky charm, with odd cupboards and cabinets, a white picket fence, and a well-kept lawn. My little attic bedroom is painted in a lovely shade of grey, with walls that slant upward at about five feet, and a window that overlooks the front yard. Nonetheless, I am having a hard time with this transition, because I am confused about what my life is supposed to look like, who I am supposed to be, and what I am supposed to strive for. A spirit of detachment is wanting. I am trying hard to step away from my constant desire to read the tidy narrative of my life, as though I can stand in the place of God, observing the unfolding of the universe in time, and holding my existence in my own hands. I wish I could see inside the mind of God, because it feels like I'm regressing, going back to my life as a college student, shoved into a small space with a lot of women, unsure of where I am going or why.

 Kathleen Norris writes about a monastic understanding of detachment. As Christians, the point is not to be free of all desire, but rather our aim is to "not [allow] either worldly values or self-centeredness to distract us from what is most essential in our relationship with God, and with each other." Community is more precious than cups, and faithfulness more treasured than furniture. I believe, O Lord, help my unbelief. 

I'm still planning to store my dishes and furniture, but I want to do so with my heart believing in God's constant loving-kindness, with hands that are open to give and receive, and a mouth that is ready to sing worship and shout praise. It's nearly Good Friday after all: "Not my will, but yours, be done."

Hitherto thy love has blessed me,

 thou hast brought me to this place, 

and I know thy hand will lead me, 

safely home by thy good grace.

Amen.

"O Lord, open thou our lips, and our mouths shall show forth thy praise."

A Certain Strangling

      I have lost my voice. Spiritually, I mean. I intended to spend 2013 writing and contemplating voice, in order to regain the part of my own voice that has weakened and been lost.  This did not happen, however, and I can’t say why, though I can talk a little about what has happened to it. When I was younger, in my first few years of college, those truly, purely idealistic years, I took a risk. At the time, I believed that God wanted me to take my voice to the ends of the earth, and to recount his story of love to those who had never heard it. But when I tried to do this, when I embarked on a big, scary overseas adventure, I found that the journey was too hard, the task too large, and I failed. I discovered that I lacked the courage to live boldly every day.

            Since that time, that tragic moment of epic failure, over seven years ago, I have been walking under a sky of shame, and the weather does not change. This is important in our conversation about voice, because it was shame that silenced me. It hushed the part of my voice that spoke boldly, that took risks and chose adventure. I am trying now, after all this time, to release some of that feeling of shame. It is hard, sometimes, for me to be gracious with myself. But God is gracious, more gracious than I understand.

            I was recently describing my feelings of condemnation toward myself, and the judgment I feel emanating from God, when someone wise spoke to me and said, “No, God is kinder than this.” And, “You need to show yourself more grace.” She doesn’t know, of course, that I desperately want to feel permitted to show myself more grace. I want to be kinder to myself, but I feel that I don’t deserve it. Such kindness is unwarranted, unearned. But that is the point of grace, isn’t it? It is never about what is deserved; grace gives, lavishly, what is most needed.

            I need to feel this grace extended to me, from me, because God’s grace in this same matter is already given. Sometimes, I can see the light of grace falling from his open hands: little golden daffodils of grace wholly gratuitous. I’m going to climb inside one of those glowing yellow cups and sit a while.

            Essentially, to regain my voice, I need to remove my hands from around my own neck, until my face is no longer blue and my eyes sink back into their sockets.  

“And the ransomed of the LORD shall

            return

     and come to Zion with singing;

everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;

     they shall obtain gladness and joy,

     and sorrow and sighing shall flee

             away.”

Rose of the World

I had better write something. I'm trying to engage more fully in life during this season of the Nativity. Mostly, I'm remembering why I sometimes like to live on the periphery of my own consciousness: it's easier. The thing about fasting, about any kind of willing self-privation, is that it leaves you feeling empty. That is how I felt all day today. I wandered through my day, wander is the only appropriate word, feeling hollow inside. I kept asking myself why I felt that at the very center of myself all that existed was emptiness. This is why I fast--I fast so that I can come more quickly to the end of myself. If I am not distracted by food or media, by things that bludgeon my spiritual awareness with their facade of pleasantness, then I cannot escape a great awareness of my own lack. It's not a good feeling, but it's a true one.

There is this George MacDonald fairy story I like, "The Wise Woman", in which two horrid little girls--Agnes and the princess Rosamond--are kidnapped by a mysterious woman and thrown, separately, into a room of mirrors. In the room they are naked, left entirely to their own selves. It takes very little time to discover how ugly the world is if you are the only thing in it.

Nothing bad could happen to her--she was so important! And, indeed, it was but this: she had cared only for Somebody, and now she was going to have only Somebody. Her own choice was going to be carried a good deal farther for her than she would have knowingly carried it for herself. . . .All at once, on the third day, she was aware that a naked child was seated beside her. But there was something about the child that made her shudder. . . .The moment she hated her, it flashed upon her with a sickening disgust that the child was not another, but her Self, her Somebody, and that she was now shut up with her forever and ever--no more for one moment to be alone. 

Well, that is how I am beginning to feel. That's how I feel during every fast. When I strip away the things that distract me from a sober knowledge of my own self, I feel trapped in a world of mirrors. And at the center of the world is only my own Somebody. This is unpleasant. I wonder what it feels like to be in solitary confinement, are there any distractions then? Is there any way to turn away from a vision of your true self?

I think, eventually, after looking so deeply into the well of my own soul, I'll see something glimmering at the bottom. This something is grace, I think. It is the evidence of God working in my soul. The presence of the Holy Spirit, given to me as an inheritance, shining constantly through the murky, stagnant waters. In the meantime, I will try to see myself without flinching.

"My soul shall make her boast in the LORD: the humble shall hear thereof, and be glad."

The Nativity Fast

 

Today is the first day of the Nativity fast. Christmas is actually coming! I have a really bad attitude about the fast just now because I don't want to give up any creature comforts. I've been feeling so tired and drained lately, and the things I have given up for the fast are the things I most typically use to comfort myself. But last year, I found that participating in the fast and using an advent wreath kept me grounded and unstressed in the midst of all that holiday frenzy. If there is anything I need, it is the space to be focused and calm. 

I need to compile a good reading list for the next 40 days. I'm hoping I'll write more regularly during this time as well. Here is a happy thought for the next forty days: "This is a joyous fast in anticipation of the Nativity of Christ." Jesus is coming!

I found the following tips and the aforementioned quotation on the website for the Self-Ruled Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America (http://www.antiochian.org/node/18518): 

The Purpose of Fasting
The purpose of fasting is to focus on the things that are above, the Kingdom of God. It is a means of putting on virtue in reality, here and now. Through it we are freed from dependence on worldly things. We fast faithfully and in secret, not judging others, and not holding ourselves up as an example.

• Fasting in itself is not a means of pleasing God. Fasting is not a punishment for our sins. Nor is fasting a means of suffering and pain to be undertaken as some kind of atonement. Christ already redeemed us on His Cross. Salvation is a gift from God that is not bought by our hunger or thirst.
• We fast to be delivered from carnal passions so that God’s gift of Salvation may bear fruit in us.
• We fast and turn our eyes toward God in His Holy Church. Fasting and prayer go together.
• Fasting is not irrelevant. Fasting is not obsolete, and it is not something for someone else. Fasting is from God, for us, right here and right now.
• Most of all, we should not devour each other. We ask God to “set a watch and keep the door of our lips.”

Do Not Fast

• between December 25 and January 5 (even on Wednesdays and Fridays);

• if you are pregnant or nursing a newborn;

• during serious illness;

• without prayer;

• without alms-giving;

• according to your own will without guidance from your spiritual father. 

  
  
  Oh, here is one more quotation that sums up my thoughts on the subject:
  
  

  In light of the gross materialism of the secular Advent - the Christmas shopping season - the season of Advent has a valuable place in our spiritual lives. Through this season's emphasis on prayer, fasting and charity, the spiritual reality of Christ's Incarnation is brought to bear on our daily lives, thereby preparing us to welcome the Messiah into our hearts at time of His Advent.  -Fr. Lawrence Barriger (http://www.acrod.org/readingroom/spirituallife/on-the-nativity-fast)

   It's time to say, "see you later," to Ordinary Time.  
   
  Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things, and give me life in your ways. 
  
  

Substance and Shadows

This will be a very short post. I just need to say that today I learned something. In my relationship with God, I am the changeable one. When I sin, God is faithful. When I choose righteousness, God is faithful. When I am sad, God is faithful. When I am happy, God is faithful. He is loving all the time, just and holy all the time, slow to anger all the time, and perfectly, perfectly, gracious--all the time. His steadfast love does not change with the seasons, and his love is not shaken by my inconsistency. Isn't that a beautiful thought?

There is a reason Aquinas describes God as the Unmoved Mover. O, Lord, let me live at the still point, where you are.