Beloved \u2013<\/p>\n
One day in seminary, I was lamenting to a friend, Asha \u2013 praise, petition, lament, we do a lot of that sort of thing in seminary \u2013 about my ill-spent youth and how I regretted being so fat and having been so sexually active when I was younger and having such money problems and still not understanding what it meant to \u201cbe an adult.\u201d (Or as we might say now, \u201cto adult.\u201d)<\/p>\n
She stopped me in my tracks.<\/p>\n
She told me it sounded like I was saying I had to attain some status of virtue or experience or way of being that was other<\/em> from the way I was\u2014and am\u2014in the world before I could move forward into the work God was calling me to. She said, \u201cGod didn\u2019t call some slim Catharine. God called you. Just like God didn\u2019t call Asha who wasn\u2019t a mom. God\u2019s calling me.\u201d<\/p>\n Now, that might not be language you\u2019re using, and that\u2019s fine.<\/p>\n The point, as Asha got to, was that our whole lives point toward the moment we\u2019re in now<\/em>. Everything that has ever happened to us has led to this moment.<\/p>\n This place.<\/p>\n Even if we\u2019re not sure what \u201cthis place\u201d is or what we\u2019re doing here or where we\u2019re going, we are not alone. Not only are we accompanied by our own pasts, our own failures and shortcomings, our own hearts\u2026<\/p>\n Not only are we accompanied by those who know and love us even though<\/em> we are flawed and have sometimes had to feel our ways through, when we could not perceive what our next move should be\u2026<\/p>\n Not only are we accompanied by the other creatures, from persistent viruses to the great blue whale, who share this gorgeous planet with us\u2026<\/p>\n We are accompanied by the very Spirit that gives life to all of that. We are accompanied by the Source \u2013that is, it is always available \u2013 of Love that always has more and more and more for us.<\/p>\n But if you\u2019ve been around for a while, you\u2019ve heard me say these things.<\/p>\n You\u2019ve heard me talk about how we are all part of the Big Picture. How we are linked in beautiful chains of light and energy to all other things, an inexpressible, impossibly complex web; you\u2019ve heard it all before.<\/p>\n I am still fat. And nowadays I have mobility challenges to boot, things I\u2019m shy about, ways that make being in public really hard to manage, physically and emotionally hard.<\/p>\n I still find money hard to manage. I still want to spend money when I want to spend money! Darn it, money may not buy happiness, but sometimes I think if I just had one more<\/em> bottle of pretty ink for my fountain pens\u2026<\/p>\n I\u2019m snippy. I\u2019m defensive. I\u2019m moody. I forget things \u2013 boy, howdy, do I forget things! \u2013 and I lose things (which is really just forgetting where they are).<\/p>\n But see, what Asha said to me is that all of that, all of every single little thing \u2013 every slight I have endured, every time I have been unkind, every unloving thing I have ever done, every way I have not taken care \u2013 these are as much a part of me as the rest.<\/p>\n And all <\/em>of it, all<\/em> of it, she said, is part of my testimony.<\/p>\n Testimony.<\/p>\n Our testimony is simply the story of how we came to understand ourselves in relationship with the Source of Love. How did I get here? What am I doing now? How am I striving and failing and trying again?<\/p>\n Testimony is no less than the story of your life, with all its confusions and mistakes and glories and delights.<\/p>\n And it is the story of a call. A call to be exactly yourself. Not to wait until you\u2019re some kind of perfect version of an imagined self. But the self you are<\/em>.\u00a0 And even the self you have been, you know that one you don\u2019t really want people to know about?<\/p>\n The saying from Frederich Beuchner, so often repeated among vocation directors and ministers and seminary professors is that our vocation, our call, what we are alluringly drawn to be in this world is just this:\u00a0Where our own deep joy meets the needs of the world.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not that we have to tackle every single need of the world. We don\u2019t have to have a savior complex. It\u2019s not all ours to be. It\u2019s also what brings us deep joy<\/em>. And that deep joy comes from knowing ourselves well, from understanding our own joys and sorrows, what our secret happinesses and hopes are.<\/p>\n \u201cWhoever you are, no matter how lonely, Those lines of Mary Oliver\u2019s stay with me.\u00a0Whoever<\/em> you are. Not the perfect version you find yourself hoping or waiting for. You have a work to do in this world, a beingness that is yours and yours alone, and you may see it reflected in the world around you, in the world with all its \u201cforms most beautiful,\u201d offering itself to you and your discerning mind.<\/p>\n Blessings to you and to your testimony, my loves. And may the days of the ancestors have been good to you \u2013<\/p>\n ~Catharine~<\/p>\n PS \u2013 Oh! Before I forget! (Remember, I said I forget things!) December 14th<\/sup>, that Saturday before the winter solstice, we will observe the fifth annual Going into the Dark<\/a> event. There is an Early Bird bonus for signing up on the front end, and I think we\u2019re going to have a tremendous group this year! So check out the Going into the Dark<\/a> registration link, or the email you got from me last week, and let\u2019s get ready for the close and holy darkness!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Beloved \u2013 One day in seminary, I was lamenting to a friend, Asha \u2013 praise, petition, lament, we do a lot of that sort of thing in seminary \u2013 about my ill-spent youth and how I regretted being so fat and having been so sexually active when I was younger and having such money problems […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7200,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewayoftheriver.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7199"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewayoftheriver.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewayoftheriver.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewayoftheriver.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewayoftheriver.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thewayoftheriver.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7199\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewayoftheriver.com\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewayoftheriver.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewayoftheriver.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewayoftheriver.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThe world offers itself to your imagination,\u201d<\/p>\n