vocation | Dreaming Beneath the Spires

In Praise of Desert and Wilderness Experiences

John the Baptist, his heart and mind and spirit filled with the word of God, pregnant with his calling, does not do what we would today if we sense a calling. He does not go to the cities, to Jerusalem; he does not seek a platform; in fact, he initially does not speak at all.

He goes into silence, into solitude and lets the silence and solitude mould him into the Prophet God wants him to be. He does not seek the audience, the ministry, or the influence; he seeks his God, and God brings it all to him–the ministry, the recognition, the influence, the crowds, the “cross”.

He put first things first: He put God first, and the rest came to him.

* * *

John the Baptist’s season in the desert of preparation for his prophetic calling was a period of extreme simplicity–in his clothing…a garment of camel hair with a leather belt, and in the simple eating, locusts and wild honey (protein and simple carbs) which helped him focus on the most important things…

In solitude, he got to know God, to know his voice, to let the Spirit which had filled him from his mother’s womb (Luke 1:15) strengthen him, so that he wasn’t thrown when crowds seeking baptism flocked to him “from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan” including tax collectors and soldiers whom he fearlessly challenged. The time in the desert was necessary for him to gain the strength to stand up to the priests and Levites and Pharisees and Sadducees, whom he scathingly labelled “a brood of vipers” (Matt 3:7) and not hesitate to confront Herod, precipitating his own death (Mark 6 14-29).

The time in the desert made John unique (among those born of women there is no one greater than John, Jesus says, Luke 7:28), for in the desert, he had unusual, totally inspiring company. God was in the desert; the Spirit of God hovered over the desert, there were ministering angels in the desert (Matt 4:11), and eventually the Son of God, Jesus himself came there. John the Baptist, “a voice crying in the wilderness,” sounded unique, he sounded like himself. He sounded like God

Thomas Merton writes, “Many poets are not poets for the same reason that many religious men are not saints: they never succeed in being themselves. They never get around to being the particular poet or the particular monk they are intended to be by God. They never become the man or the artist who is called for by all the circumstances of their individual lives. They waste their years in vain efforts to be some other poet, some other saint…They wear out their minds and bodies in a hopeless endeavour to have somebody else’s experiences or write somebody else’s poems, or possess someone else’s spirituality. There can be an intense egoism in following everybody else. People are in a hurry to magnify themselves by imitating what is popular-and too lazy to think of anything better. Hurry ruins saints as well as artists. They want quick success and they are in such a haste to get it that they cannot take time to be true to themselves. (Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation).

* * *

“God leads everyone he loves into the desert,” Paul Miller, a friend who mentored and “discipled” me for five years writes in his excellent book, A Praying Life, Moses, David, and Elijah among them.

We all have seasons of quietness, when, if we are to do the work involved in fulfilling our call, we must be alone and silent and quiet. God shapes us in that silence with his word, his spirit, and his love, until we are ready for the next season.

But desert seasons can be unendurably quiet. We can feel like failures while we wait.

However, if we try to short-circuit the desert season necessary for us to be shaped in silence into the kind of people who are able to bear the weight of the call of God, then the desert season gets prolonged, for we are not yet ready for our call.

* * *

For me the call to the desert in my life has been to retreat into silence and obscurity and “do the work: write the book.” I admit I have tried to get out of it by social life, volunteering in church, school and the community; teaching Bible studies, travel, adult education courses, films, theatre, money-making, money-saving, hosting and attending parties, “friendships” or small groups in which I did not add something of value to my friends’ life, or they to mine… But trying to get out of your calling, and out of doing what you have to do because of the sacrifices involved is not really satisfying. Ask Jonah. But God uses and shapes even our mistakes into a beautiful and useful story. Read the Book of Jonah.

By refusing to accept the deserts God calls us into, by filling them with noise, distraction, and busyness, we can prolong the season of preparation for our call. And, more chillingly, we may never do the work God has uniquely called us to do. I suspect many people never really step into their calling and vocation, for they are not willing to accept the sacrifice that preparation for it entails.

* * *

If God calls you into the desert, accept it. Do not numb the occasional loneliness and solitude with “crazy-busy, sugar, alcohol, the internet” (from Brene Brown’s list of the way we numb the pain of living, and then grow too numb to experience its joy). Pray, work, grow. Desert seasons end when you are ready for the next stretch of your call.

And the desert is not really a quiet, empty place. It is full of very important, very powerful, influential, and creative people you simply have to get to know to be happy and creative and fulfil your calling. God is in the desert. The Risen Jesus is in the desert. The wind of the Spirit blows and gusts through the desert. The desert is full of angels, to help you withstand the temptations of the desert–to too much food, to wanting power, to showing off. (Matthew 4 1-10).

It’s a quiet and desert season for me at the moment, empty-nesting, and guess what–I rather like it. With God’s grace, I hope not to short-circuit it, but to meet the one who came to the desert to meet John the Baptist, the one who baptises with the Holy Spirit and with fire.

P. S. I am reading through the Book of Mark, and hope to share a reflection inspired by that great and short book every Sunday. Join me?

As Birds Sing Because They Must, Even So I Write

By Anita Mathias

As long as I have a garden to muck about in, and the health to do it, I shall not mind growing old. My garden is a deep joy at the centre of my life, even though I am making peace with not being able to keep up with it: it’s an acre and a half.

My nerves felt raw today, but then, I went out to the garden, which is bird-loud, and felt peace return.

Listening to birds sing, it’s suggested helps us relax, helps us complete tasks, and even think creatively. For instance, I didn’t have a single fresh idea for a blog post when I went out, and then, the garden gave me this!

* * *

Why do birds sing? Birds sing thousands of times through the day, the red-eyed vireo singing 20,000 songs daily. They sing to mark out their territories, to attract mates, or simply to communicate with other birds. They sing because it is their nature. They sing because they must.

Gerard Manley Hopkins imagines kingfishers catching fire, dragonflies drawing flame, while singing, “What I do is me. For that I came.”

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.

Í say móre: the just man justices;
Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—
Chríst—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

* * *

I have at various points considered giving up writing—when I had a miscarriage when Zoe was two; when I was pregnant with Irene; when domestic chaos overwhelmed me.

But each time when I decided to do nothing but housework until our house was orderly—-the last attempt was 7 years ago– I slipped into depression. It was hard to get out of bed, hard to focus on the sorting, organizing, dishes, laundry, the endless domestic routines.

If, however, I gave myself just an hour or two of creating, I had energy for the rest. Because that is what I was made for: to write. And when I am not doing it, I am listless, slightly unhappy, and don’t have energy for anything else.

And so, each time I was tempted to give up writing to be a perfect homemaker, or a perfect mummy, I would return to writing, because it was my calling, my vocation.

* * *

As a bird sings its high, clear note, and as fish splash through the seas of this world, I am made to play with words and ideas, to attempt to recreate beauty out of beauty.

Writing time is slowly opening as I grow more disciplined. What will I write? How much? I don’t know.

But this I do know–as Milton puts it,

Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow,
It shall be still in strictest measure even
To that same lot, however mean or high,
Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven;
All is, if I have grace to use it so,
As ever in my great Taskmaster’s eye.

Image Credit

The Will of God Always Leads Us to a Larger Place

By Anita Mathias

As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men.” At once they left their nets and followed him. (Matthew 4 18-20)

So the fishers of fish become halieis anthropon, ἁλιεῖς ἀνθρώπων, fishers of men. The will of God always leads us to a larger place, to an enlarged territory.

Because God’s desire is always for the fullest human flourishing. “The glory of God is man fully alive,” a lovely line credited to St. Irenaeus

And once we have surrendered our lives to him, he keeps moving us, onward and upward to the place where we can both use all our gifts and be a blessing to others. And in general, he takes the moving car of who we are; our gifts, abilities and experience, and steers it higher, stronger, faster.

So Jesus takes physically strong, entrepreneurial fisherman inured to hard work, team work, hardship, disappointment, nights at sea, and gives them the task of fishing men into an eternal kingdom. He applies their natural gifts to eternal, supernatural purposes.

Of course, just as we don’t give our children just one birthday present, once in their lives, so God continually gives us new gifts, abilities, capabilities, insight and new wisdom. But the vocation to which he calls us will be true to who we are, and to our interests and gifts.

* * *

Retreat to advance

In the short run, however, Peter and Andrew, James and John became downwardly mobile. No longer independent businessmen, but vagabonds, with no place to rest their head, dependent on charity.

Their old selves had to be broken, to be reformed like a beautiful mosaic.

John Wimber, founder of the Vineyard Movement, flourished in the music industry. However, on becoming a Christian, he found it incompatible with discipleship. So he left, and found work in a factory. An old colleague came to see him, asking for John Wimber’s office. He found Wimber covered with oil, inside a oil-barrel he was scrubbing out. The musician thought Wimber had gone mad!! (Recounted by Carol Wimber in The Way it Was.)

It required this brokenness for Wimber to be willing to hear when God said, “John, I have seen your work. Now let me show you mine.” And to be open to going with the flow of God’s eccentric purposes.

And later to be a willing instrument when the Holy Spirit songs kept coming, no longer pop songs popular for a year, but spirit-given songs sung for decades, or longer.

* * *

However, it takes a period of brokenness and withdrawal for a gift to be repurposed, for fishermen to become fishers of men.

He needs our surrender before He can use us to bless others.

And when it happens, it feels like hell.

* * *

I was blocked in 2006 when a literary agent wanted me to make changes in my manuscript. Words dripped like crystallising treacle; I was blocked.

So I took a break, decided to put the kids in private school, founded a small publishing company to pay for that. When Roy could come aboard full time in 2010, and I could “retire,” I felt I no longer knew how to write. I had barely read for 4 years. I had lost writerly confidence.

When I started again, after hearing God suggest blogging, my writing was different. I was singing a new song.

I was more interested in speaking to my readers and blessing them than in a career (though, of course, I still want one) I was more interested in what I said, than in how I said it, which was huge for the girl who had been enamoured with style. I desperate to cut perfectionism off at the neck, and just get my work out there. Ship it! I was writing for the health of my soul, and as an offered gift to my readers, rather than for the glory of a career.

It takes a period of brokenness for the Great Artist to put your gifts together into a glorious mosaic, all hammered gold and gold enamelling, all tesserae and shimmering glass.

* * *

When I first wanted to offer my life to God, I went off to work with Mother Teresa, aged 17. (Having skipped years at school, winning “double promotions,” I was done with Grade 12 by the time I was 16.) I assumed because Jesus said, “Whatever you have done to the least of these…” that surely God’s will for me, and for every Christian was to work with the poor!

However, I am a dreamy and impractical person, and if I were a medieval woman when this was a plausible career choice, I would have become a mystic!

I was no good at Mother Teresa’s, with its packed-like-sardines community life; loud constant, vocal prayer, and lots of practical work. I languished and wilted; I got all sorts of things wrong; life felt like a series of hammer blows to my heart.

But writing–I have always written easily and reasonably well. It has generally been my joy.

Can writing be the way I am to serve God? Can writing be my worship? For years, I didn’t really believe something so lovely could be true

But now I do.

“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” (Frederick, Buechner, Wishful Thinking)

Because God is good, pouring perfume can be an act of worship, and so can writing (no longer for fame or money, though few are averse to these things!) but as an act of worship, of pure devotion.

“Child, you have written for ambition,” he says. “Come write for me, as your worship of me.

And I will make you… Ah, wait and see.”