Each of us has the vocation to be as whole a person as Mary was. Each of us has the vocation to be a bearer of God's word. Each of us has something grand to do. This is my understanding of scripture. It does not even matter that we are a bit neurotic--even very neurotic. Who are we to complain about God's handiwork? Neither the prophets nor the disciples are presented as men who are mature in mind and heart. We are to move out in confidence. God, in keeping with his nature, did a God-like thing: he so made us that we can use even our neurotic symptoms and conflicts for creative and constructive work and, more amazing yet, in the process he healed. This is the message that Erik Erickson, the psychoanalyst, gives us in his studies of Ghandi and the young man Luther. This may be the message bequeathed us in Isaiah's words: "Cease to dwell on days gone by and to brood over past history" (Isaiah 13:18).
The future will not be a repetition of the past. It does not matter how damaged our lives are or what forces for destruction a loose in the world, God is going to do something which is totally new. The question is, do we feel that there is a whole new world seeking to come into being, or do we experience life as essentially moving toward death? Are the problems that confront us of such magnitude that no one knows what to do? Is it a matter of holding on until the cities of the world explode or crumble back into the dark ages, or do we through the Risen Christ and his presence in us, sense that God might use the womb of our lives to bring something completely unexpected into the world?
If we are, indeed, to be the harbinger of the new, we must give attention to the moving center. This is the center which carries us out into the world to be the builders of a new heaven and a new earth. Like the other centers, it does not function well unless it is recognized, challenged and supported. In a sermon, Gordon Cosby suggested that we might do this by using the image of the bud found in the scripture: "Here and now I will do a new thing: this moment it will break from the bud. Can you not perceive it?" (Isaiah 43:19).
Gordon indicated that we could each work with the passage from Isaiah by giving attention to naming the bud in ourselves that is seeking to break forth. After doing this exercise in my small mission group, I would recommend it to you. What is the area that is pregnant within the world, and pregnant within your faith community, but most important, pregnant within yourself? So much of the time we rush into action without identifying the new thing that God is trying to do through us. We can discover the new that God is trying to do through us only by checking within to see where all the sap is building up. That is where the bud is, where God is pushing us out. Within each of us is such a place. "Keep looking," said Gordon, "until you find it, and then write down what you see." These are the same instructions that Habakkuk gave: "Write the vision down, vision is for its own time only--it does not deceive," (Habakkuk 2:2-3).
Obviously Habakkuk was a strong advocate of journal keeping. Even in a time when crude methods of inscription made the assignment difficult, he urged the writing down of visions. He knew that, in the same way that buds want to flower, visions want to be fulfilled, or they dry up and make for cynicism or bitterness.
Another evident characteristic of Habakkuk is his immense confidence in each person's capacity to have a vision. He said, "If it comes slowly, wait, for come it will, without fail" (Habakkuk 2:3).
We need those words of encouragement. For some of us images will be slow to form. We have not exercised our capacity to imagine, nor have we even thought that we could have mental images of something not yet present. Under Habakkuk's tutelage one's imagination would not have atrophied. Said this prophet: "I will stand on my watchtower, and take up my post on my battlements, watching to see what he will say to me, what answer he will make to my complaints" (Habakkuk 2:1).
It would not occur to many of us to stand back from our own lives, observe the battles within us, cry out our grievances and then watch for the images floating across the screens of our minds. People constantly complain about what is happening in the world and what is happening to them. We are acute observers of the clash between good and evil, but we have no sense of ourselves as instruments of God's justice. We are much more apt to feel that we are the victims--that things are out of our hands. The seats of power are too far removed from us. What is there to do about terrorists on the streets except to bar windows, and about terrorists in the skies, except to increase the security system? We do not know God as the Holy One who never dies, and his church as the people "watching to see what he will say...."
If we do have a vision, we are apt to discount it by saying that we have been on a "fantasy trip" or been "wool gathering."
Ours is not the only generation that has neglected watching or whose imaginations are frozen. In I Samuel it is written, "It was rare for Yahweh to speak in those days; visions were uncommon" (3:1). Three times God called to Samuel without his knowing that it was God calling. Each time he ran to Eli saying, "Here I am, since you called me." The third time Eli understood that it was Yahweh who was calling the boy, and told him, "Go and lie down and if someone calls say, 'Speak, Yahweh, your servant is listening.'" So Samuel went and lay down in his place (1 Samuel 3:9). The next time God called to him, Samuel answered, "Speak, Yahweh, your servant is listening" (3:10).
Only then does God give Samuel a vision of a better world, and how it is to be brought about. I have turned to these scriptures for the help that they give us in the discernment of call. They seem to say very clearly that we are to watch and we are to listen. The theme is repeated many times and in many ways in the New Testament: "Have you eyes that do not see, ears that do not hear?" (Mark 8:18). When our hearts have been changed we discern in ordinary happenings and words the direction in which we are to go.
Part of our difficulty in moving out after we have perceived the bud is that we lack confidence. We do not believe that we can bring about what we see. Low self-esteem, a raging disease in the world today, invades every area of our lives. Even those who dare to see visions and have dreams do not engage in any action that would bring them to fulfillment. Initially Biblical people seem to suffer from the same lack of confidence. They, too, saw visions, heard God's call and declared themselves unfit.
What caused the change that happened in these folk of long ago? If we knew, perhaps we would find help for our own sinking hearts, and the buds in us would have some chance of coming to flower. In one breath the Biblical leaders say, "I am not adequate; find someone else," and in the next, "Here I am, send me" (Isaiah 6:9). In each case the shift in feeling seems to carry with it the recognition that they will not, be traveling alone. There is One who will go with them. "Do not be afraid....I am with you to protect you..." (Jeremiah 1:8). They know themselves to be in the service of God, "singled out," as it were.
What change must take place in us if we are to have that same experience? My own feeling is that we have to come to grips with the fact that the inadequacy that we feel is in one sense an accurate evaluation of the situation. That feeling of helplessness, or frustration, or fear that arises from the pit of the stomach when confronting any large task is not necessarily a neurosis making us turn back. It may be a healthy warning signal. Unless some mysterious synthesis takes place most of us are not able to fulfill the visions and the dreams that are given to us.
If we think that we have only ourselves to rely on, we will never get started. We have to throw in our widow's mite, move out in trust and know that what we lack will be supplied. We have to be radically obedient to the vision that has been given to us, saying, "Here I am, send me." God's Spirit descends on such a person. His heart is changed, his fears dispelled. As his energy begins to flow, enthusiasm is generated. Other people are drawn and contribute their gifts. Signs are given and, in time, the new bursts forth out of the womb of one's own life.
As a writer, working with individual call, this has also been my experience. I see the bud. I have a vision of a work that might be healing, but I have no sense that I can bring it to completion. Also, somewhere along the way I begin to doubt the worth of what I want to say. After all, nothing is new under the sun. It has all been said before. And anyway, who am I to presume that others want me to share with them my heart and mind? Usually by sheer will power I overcome the enormous resistances in myself to begin a piece of writing. After that things fall into place. Thoughts are given, words flow and somewhere out of my sight a work of organization goes on. This does not mean that I do not still have an arduous piece of writing to do. Always I must keep throwing in my widow's mite.
This has to be true of the new that anyone is called to do. If the new work is not yet present, and therefore cannot be copied, or repeated, or reproduced, extraordinary effort is required.
For help in understanding call and knowing whether it is of the devil or of God, we have to turn to the Biblical people. Their experiences give us guidance in how to care for visions and to discern spirits. Saint Paul gives King Agrippa a brief and precise account of his own vision:
"...Your Majesty, in the middle of the day I saw a light from the sky, more brilliant than the sun, shining all around me and my traveling companions. We all fell to the ground, and then I heard a voice saying to me in the Jewish language, 'Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you, this kicking against the goad.' I said, 'Telll me, Lord, who you are;' and the Lord replied, 'I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But now, rise to your feet and stand upright. I have appeared to you for a purpose: to appoint you my servant and witness, to testify both to what you have seen and to what you shall yet see of me. I will rescue you from this people and from the Gentiles to whom I am sending you. I send you to open their eyes and turn, them from darkness to light, from the dominion of Satan to God, so that, by trust in me, they may obtain forgiveness of sins, and a place with those whom God has made his own."' (Acts 26:13-18 NEB)
The gentle confrontation, "It is hard for you, this kicking against the goad," makes me wonder whether my own discontent might be resistance to the urgings of God that come to me in my wishes and sighs. I wonder also whether the address, "Rise to your feet and stand upright; I have appeared to you for a purpose," might be instruction that comes in every vision from God if we could bend our ear and listen to the still small voice. We are in danger only when action, which is the dominant note of Scripture, is not in relationship with our being.
Paul told the king, "I did not disobey the heavenly vision." In fact, he explained that it was precisely for this reason he had been seized in the temple and his life threatened. He also let King Agrippa know that he had God's help and that he was happy in choosing to be faithful (Acts 26:29).
We do not become servant and witness without a heavenly vision, The signs that a person is infused with God's divine essence are not hard to discern. When John the Baptist was languishing in prison and beginning to doubt his own vision of a new age unfolding, Jesus sent him these joyous words:
"Go back and tell John what you hear and see; the blind see again, and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised to life and the Good News is proclaimed to the poor: and happy is the one who does not lose faith in me" (Matthew 11:4-6).
Visions from God are integrally connected with justice for the poor, the sick and the oppressed, the lonely and rejected. They are concerned with love and beauty and laughter. They move us out to do a unifying work.
If we were each obedient to our visions the cities would have green spaces, birds in their trees, and architecture to quicken awareness of the divine life throbbing in the whole of the world. And the towns? The towns would have galleries to hold the works of their artists; theaters for the performing arts would spring up in their squares; scientists and poets would confer with each other; students would gather for debate and reflection, children would want to continue in life, and church congregations everywhere would be struggling "to make serious use of the wings the creator had given." Everyone would know what it meant to be the servant of the Most High.
Let us nurture the moving center in ourselves. Let us be faithful to
our visions. Without them we perish.