10th February 2007
The Sanctuary at St. Columba House where I work as part-time co-ordinator has opened earlier than anticipated this year - and we have been welcoming our first guest of the season this weekend. It's felt like greeting an old friend on every level and in many ways. Lovely to see the space being used again after being shut up since a Christmas visit from a school friend. Delightful too to see a familiar face as our first visitor. Wonderful to be back in harness with this part of the work I do - that in itself is akin to greeting an old and trusted companion. It's a very precious part of my life; providing a safe place where people can come and relax, talk, be fed and find shelter; a place to reflect and reposition themselves in their world.
I feel a little like a midwife awaiting the birth when guests are in residence. I always have a sense of anticipation and often excitment on their behalf. Something unexpected always occurs. It may not feel like a birth whilst the person is here. It may be the very first labour pains or even a process of mourning what has not come to be - and yet somehow the place; the rhythm of prayer; the simple service of hospitality interplay and a certain chemistry occurs. I've yet to meet a person who, given time and space, cannot come up with possible answers to their own questions. It is extraordinary to be trusted as a fellow pilgrim for a little while on their journey. It is always a very mutual experience and I often feel ministered to in the process of being present. This weekend has been no exception.
The snow has come and almost gone. I have yet to survey the damage, but I suspect most of the daffodils will survive - it was a relatively light fall. The landscape where we are is transformed by even just a dusting. I am always struck by the number of wild animal tracks in the snow. Our front garden seems to be a main thoroughfare for all kinds of creatures.
I haven't seen the roe deer for a few days and suspect that they may have been frightened away for the time being by the gunmen taking pot shots at the waterfowl. I often have an almost uncontrolable urge to let our dogs out to run around and scatter the birds. I hate to see them shot.
Our cats, Cuthbert and Teazle, have given up serious hunting on the grounds that everywhere is frozen. The large pine chair in the kitchen with its patchwork cushion is a much more comfortable spot.
I have been reflecting a lot in recent days about what vocation means and in particular what it means to be chosen. I have been reading from a retreat book focused around the writing of the theologian, Henri Nouwen. It provides challenging resources which help me to explore what being chosen means for me. Phrases like 'knowing I am made in the image of God'; seeing myself as 'beautifully and wonderfully made' can become platitudes that trip off the tongue, rather than inner truths that are readily lived and embraced.
I have long felt vocation is something to do with finding the unique footprint which is mine alone to leave on the earth. How I work this out is where the chosenness comes in, I think. What difference does it make to me? To how I live my life? The choices I make? If I see myself called by God; known in my mother's womb and created to be in intimate relationship with God?
I struggle with this. The imagery we have received, particularly through the Psalmists, casts us in the most intimate and intricate relationship with the Creator - the Other - the One we name God. What does it mean to be chosen in this way? Is it, by definition, a feeling of oneness - a joining of purpose with a Higher Intention? Should the marks of being chosen be visible in a sense of feeling content and at peace with our choice? Is it possible to be chosen but edgy; uncomfortable with all that it means to be of God? Can you choose not to be chosen? Was Cain 'chosen' in this sense?
Can you be chosen to challenge?
Yes.
Look at Jeremiah.
Nouwen rightly, I think, links the out-working of our chosenness to a sense of blessing. Not in the kind of the Theology of Blessing popular in some quarters of Christianity which suggests that those who find favour with God are financially and materially richly blessed, but rather as the awareness of blessed -ness.
Psychologically, blessedness could be described as the moment when we have be-friended who we are; our past stories; and our future aspirations; when, in a sense, we see ourselves for what we are - and love ourselves as we are - rather than loving the parts we perceive as acceptable. This view finds resonance in Matthew's presentation of The Sermon on the Mount. Blessedness in this context can be read as a spiritual maturity as well as a perceived reality.
My chosenness seems to be something around a sense of recognising the rightness or appropriateness of who I am and what I am doing within the context I am in. It seems highly probable that a large number of people feel called, in a vocational sense, to take up their cross - whether that be as a nurse, justice campaigner, carer, High Court Judge or priest. Our sense of calling may help to drive us on when things get tough, but it is our sense of blessedness which consoles us, which maintains our worth in our own eyes. Whoever we are - or whatever we do - it is the feeling that we believe we have intrinsic value that helps us to retain emotional perspective and find the courage to not only befriend ourselves, but others.
I listen
Not to your words
Which speak of things that fill the air and
shatter the silence.
I listen to the dream
that swells your heart
and makes you catch your breath
with desire.
I catch a glimpse
of well covered woundedness
and recognise the hurtfull-ness we all share.
I watch you
listen and embrace with
compassion
the you
who watched you,
and till now,
could only stare.
Blessed are the pilgrims who risk finding themselves.
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