Landscapes

What I'm doing in life right now is the hardest thing I've ever done (besides VGA). Harder than Kolkata. Harder than UW. Those other things may have felt just as hard or even harder, but that's only because I had less spiritual tools to work with at the time. Its encouraging to remind myself that I never would have survived even one week in my current situation prior to this year. Its a good thing we grow.

It is remarkable how easily we are influenced by the thoughts, words, and lifestyles of others. And it is disappointing to realize how very vulnerable and weak we are in the face of all this. For so long I was convinced that if I could only choose belief, then I would be unstoppable. I was sure (though I never would have admitted it) that I had all the wisdom and skill necessary for ministry. All I lacked was the will and the heart.

In the months preceding this new "vocation" of mine, these certainties were exactly reversed. After L'Abri and Taize I had a deep desire to touch people with compassion (it burned in me). I loved and yearned for people in a way I hadn't experienced since my conversion. But I also had a new and strange distrust of my ability. If I found myself tongue-tied pre-Europe, post-Europe found my feet and hands tied instead. It was all about waiting, waiting, waiting for the opportunity. Waiting for my call. Waiting for God's "go ahead."

I had a lot of hope for the Corinthian texts: "My strength is made perfect in weakness...," "God has chosen the weak things...," etc. I held to the old quip, "God does not call the qualified, but qualifies the called." Well, now that all of me is unstuck (tongue, hands, and feet,) something is still not quite right. Why am I still not conquering the world? After all, I'm not waiting for anything anymore. I am completely free in my faith, in my adulthood, and in my calling. So why do I still get lazy? Why am I still powerless over my gluttony? Why fearful? (So, so fearful.) Why undisciplined? Unloving? Sometimes depressed?

And why, with my new "commitment" to obedience, did God have to first send me to this most difficult post of all? When it makes me tremble with doubt, when it draws out even my deepest, most hidden fears, why does he leave me in this space? When will I ever be able to move past myself so that life can be less about me and more about others?

Who am I blessing right now? How is this "ministry"?

I am so afraid of going back to what was, of loosing my joy and my New Life. What happened in Europe gave me so much hope. It filled my life with wonder, such promise, and so much love. I felt energized and alive in a way I'd nearly given up on ever feeling again. Forgive me for beating this thing to death: tender, whole, deliberate, and so, so deeply beautiful... that's how it was. How can one-time children of Light settle for this New Age pandering of Yin and Yang and the acceptance of a death called "balance"? Oh, there is indeed a very healthy form of death, I know. And though I've struggled to welcome it, I have at least now let it in the front door of my heart. But this Christian kind of death is meant as the passage to Eternal Life. Can shadows of the spiritual life really serve this end? Oh, what am I thinking? Of course they can! They always have. In the life of every saint, in creation, in the history of God, they have. Why does this truth keep elluding me?

As I sit here on the couch I am gazing through the window at the ocean. A few days ago I discovered a secret trail leading down through a neighbor's yard towards the beach. Most everyone I know will be appalled to learn how unenthusiastic I usually am about the sea. I'm sorry about that. Truth be told, I've never really been a "beachy" kind of girl. I prefer wheat fields to run in, and the ever-present sky with its lights and stars and sun. Recently I heard about a book that parallels landscapes with our spiritual journeys (no, I haven't read the book yet). This was not a new idea to me. It is clear why I like the wild freedom of these open spaces. God has always spoken to me through their gold: gold beams streaming through golden clouds on golden fields. And all of this moving, rolling on, forever.

Unfortunately, during times of spiritual dryness I have at times approached God brazenly in these, his symbols. I have raged at sunsets and worn ugly yellows, as if somehow I could induce God's presence in my life. In Kolkata I finally learned to accept Absence (thank you, Mother Teresa and Martin Marty). Like the quail-stuffed children of Israel on their way to the Promised Land, I finally got sick from my impetuous spiritual appetite. "God sent leanness" just in time, and thereafter I experienced a period of much needed "winterfallow." (Check out Marty's book, "A Cry of Absence," and you'll pick up my allusions-- if you haven't already.)

In Kolkata I learned to accept the greyness. The external imagery of the place matched perfectly the way I felt inside: smoggy, dead, and numbed with noise. By the time I arrived back in the United States I could hardly stand to look at a sunset. (Was it shame? Embarrassment? Disappointment?) What I felt, distinctly, was that sunsets were somehow just too rich for my new spiritual diet.

Coming to the west side, now, I am finding myself confronted with a new spiritual scape in the sea. I actually enjoyed myself at the beach this week. Immensely. The tide was out and the cold grey rocks were draped in green seaweed. Smooth sandbars sunk beneath my feet and disappeared beneath water. I watched seagulls; I stuck my fingers into giant barnacles and hopped over driftwood. And most beautiful of all? As I stood gazing into the distance I finally saw the setting sun as a brand new gift. It did not come to me streaming over summer wheat fields. It came in stillness, trembling over little golden waves.

And this was the great grey sea.