Sustaining Call Over Time

Last year, F@W focused on identifying our calls – at home, at work and for the common good. This year, we will focus on sustaining those calls over time. We all know what it’s like to run out of energy for something we once felt passionate about. Drawing inspiration from the biblical tradition of Sabbath – 7th day and 7th year rest – we plan to make 2007 a year of renewal for all of us. In this issue, our focus is “spiritual practices.”

Getting Started

The alarm buzzed. I got up in the dark and dressed hurriedly because the house was cold. Minutes later, I would be at the piano, beginning to stretch my fingers with scales and chords as the furnace clicked on. Then I would hear my dad in the kitchen, getting the coffee pot and morning oatmeal started. Just as I shifted to my first difficult piece, he would settle himself on the couch to read. No words passed between us until it was time for breakfast. By then, I had gone over every piece, phrase by phrase, line by line, moving toward musical expression. Every day (except Sunday) our routine was the same. I did not know then that practicing the piano was a spiritual discipline which would prepare me for responding to God’s call when it came.

My first call was simply to WAKE UP! To shift my focus from me/myself to the unfolding miracle of creation – and my small part in it. It happened in the local mortuary, where I practiced the pipe organ, sharing space with people who were no longer alive. The gift of life which had once been theirs was very much alive in me. Like Moses at the burning bush, my first “call” was to realize that I was already standing on holy ground. Some call it conversion. Others see it as confirmation. The “spiritual practice” that I needed then was to know the biblical stories of call – so I could recognize what was happening, give it language, and find meaning in it.

Right Work

Listening to the biblical stories of call, I realized that God also had a “right work” for me to do. At first, I thought it was simply marriage to Peter. Then, when he was sent to Vietnam, I discovered that God had something specific for me to do whether Peter came back safely or not. I began to see that each person has some particular work to do, and that discovering it can be a lifetime process. To do that, I needed a spiritual community – people who were also searching for God’s guidance and direction. Faith@Work magazine became important to me then, because it contained stories of ordinary people (like me) who were seeking to follow Jesus in the midst of our me-first culture.

Thirty years ago, my small group named my primary gift as “outreach teaching,” and that still seems right. In my 40s, I went to seminary and then became the director of Faith@Work. My call to “outreach teaching” took the form of writing and leading retreats–and of putting this magazine together since 1985. I needed the support of regular worship, going on retreats myself, writing spiritual reports and a small group to hold me accountable for the rhythm of renewal. Like those early mornings at the piano, the routines of spiritual community and being alone in nature were just what I needed in order to sustain my work for the long haul.

Rhythm of Renewal

For me, spiritual practice is like breathing in and out. It’s darkness and light; nature and noise; social risk and solo retreat; outward journey and inward response. Parker Palmer speaks of this both/and quality of spiritual practice as “action-and-contemplation (hyphenated) in his book, The Active Life. Palmer writes of dis-illusionment as an important aspect of contemplation. We need to let go of our illusions, he says. And when I try to apply that, I see how often I try to impose my idealized picture of how others “ought to” behave rather than loving our differences. I see that most clearly in my weekly mission group, where we bump into those unspoken expectations and either learn to speak our hopes or we go away blaming others because they don’t measure up.

Palmer adds dis-location as another guide toward reality, upending our carefully constructed safety zones which keep us from seeing the hidden wholeness of God’s presence in all things. Like Jonah, we sometimes run the other way to avoid knowing God’s mercy toward those we’d love to hate. Each year, the Guatemala Pilgrimage puts me in another culture with a wonderfully varied group of FAW folk so I can keep my consciousness freshened through dis-location. If you’d like to join that exciting trip, call the FAW office now. Dates are July 21-31, 2007.

And so, as we begin a new year around the theme of spiritual practices to sustain God’s call in our lives, we welcome a new cover artist, Susan Due Pearcy, and two new columnists, Ann Loar Brooks and Mark Nilson. We also welcome Nancy Boyle back to the Relational Bible Study page with excerpts from her new book, Call is Not a One-Time Thing. I hope you will watch with me for the unexpected – events which strip away our illusions, disappoint our cultural expectations, and throw us headlong into God’s call as it comes freshly with each new day.

Marjory Bankson is editor of Faith@Work magazine, artist, relational teacher and author of Call to the Soul and a brand new version of Seasons of Friendship, and is a Steward of The Seekers Church, a faith community of Church of the Saviour in Washington DC.