A DIALOGUE

August 27, 2006

"Ministry, Vocation, Calling"

by

Rev. Alicia Roxanne Forde

and

Bobbie Poole,

  NUUC Director of Religious Exploration

Alicia:

When it happened…  how, did it?  Is it that stark?  A profoundly memorable

Moment marked in the landscape of your life?  Etched like a deep groove into

The canvass of your heart.

            You show it.  you tell: this is the moment I was called.  This – right here,

See how it’s shaped, feel its roughness as if the one calling had a hold on me, and I,

Filled with doubt, ripped myself away….

            Or, was it different?  Like a barely perceptible ripple, and yet you knew that

There was something that you had to do.  Could not journey away from – only toward

With great urgency…giving your whole self to this task, this passion, that would not

Let you go.  And you, in so doing, received much from it.  You learned what it meant to

Be responsible to.  You wake up changed, different somehow – a little more human. 

            You wake up willing to stand in awe…willing to embrace silence – for you’ve learned that in that silence you hear

You hear something.

            Calling.

                        Calling your name. 

Bobbie:

Maybe it was soft and incessant.  Maybe a loud, gently whisper.

Vocatio – summons, vocare – to call, vocation in the words of Unitarian Universalist minister Richard Gilbert: …is being open to the invitation life extends to each and every one of us to become fully and responsibly human.

 And on the path of vocation – of becoming fully and responsibly human…what is our ministry?  What is it that nudges us, wakes us up and compels us to act?

Jacob Trapp wrote in our Chalice Lighting reading:

Worship is to work with dedication and with skill;

It is to pause from work and listen to a strain of music…

Worship is loneliness seeking communion

This is a community of faith in which we work with dedication

We pause to play, to be in communion, to listen…and respond…

Who calls you here to this community of faith? 
And to what are you called in this community of faith?

Alicia:

Sharing stories with each other over lunch one day this summer,

Bobbie and I talked about what I call “the fire in my belly”

The call to be on this vocational path of becoming fully and

Responsibly human through the ministry of serving as a congregational minister

Though I have tried, I could do no other thing without being called back

To this path.

Today we will share with you, our “call stories” and invite you to think about your own.

                           POETRY ~ Pablo Neruda

And it was at that age...Poetry arrived

in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where

it came from, from winter or a river.

I don't know how or when,

no, they were not voices, they were not

words, nor silence,

but from a street I was summoned,

from the branches of night,

abruptly from the others,

among violent fires

or returning alone,

there I was without a face

and it touched me. I did not know what to say, my mouth

had no way

with names

my eyes were blind,

and something started in my soul,

fever or forgotten wings,

and I made my own way,

deciphering

that fire

and I wrote the first faint line,

faint, without substance, pure

nonsense,

pure wisdom

of someone who knows nothing,

and suddenly I saw

the heavens

unfastened

and open,

planets,

palpitating plantations,

shadow perforated,

riddled

with arrows, fire and flowers,

the winding night, the universe.  And I, infinitesimal being,

drunk with the great starry

void,

likeness, image of

mystery,

I felt myself a pure part

of the abyss,

I wheeled with the stars,

my heart broke free on the open sky.

It is no coincidence that both the poet and the minister

Speak of being called as a summoning…an ordinary,

Extraordinary summoning.

            Summoned abruptly from a street, says Neruda

While McNatt asks was it a sudden understanding

Were you driving with a friend…listening to your partner’s breath?

Did you see it coming?  Have you always known?

Did you, could you – run? Resist?

Or were you – like Neruda, made blind by the power of that

Something that started in your soul?

            That yes that began forming as the fire in your belly

Even before your mouth was inclined to form the word…yes

//

What is it to wake, now?  To hear something call…calling you,

Calling me – to feel the deep power and a connection to it.

To know action must happen,

            Because

                        Because I, infinitesimal being am made in the

Image of mystery – and that means that you are and you are and you are

And that means when you suffer

            When you face injustice

                        When you live in hardship

I do, as well.

//

As a youngster I attended Sunday services at the

Anglican Church in Scarborough with my Granny Yvonne.

After services, I would sit on my grandmother’s veranda

Legs dangling over the edge…

            Listening with confusion and excitement to the preaching

And wailing coming from inside the small church across the street.

I could hear the preacher thumping on the pulpit.

The people: Amen, Alleluia, Praise God…Yesssssssssss Lord!

They sang with drums, and tambourines, they cried…I could hear them

            Power, there seemed to be power there – fire.

Was that my first call?  Wanting to touch that fire?  Wanting to

Have that experience of being moved by the Holy Spirit?

//

Or, or, was it many years later, in high school – trying hard to

Raise consciousness.

            Educating any one who would listen about the detrimental, and

Long term effects on the island’s landscape of pursuing tourism as

A major source of income.

            New hotels promoted land erosion, decimation of delicate

Marine life, coastal erosion as a result of dredging our harbor,

A shift in life from dependence on the land – agriculture

To being dependent on foreign income and imported goods.

Was it then, that I felt the meaning of Parker Palmer’s words:

            “true vocation joins self and service…”

Or Frederick Buechner’s definition of vocation as:

            “the place where your deep gladness meets the world’s

Deepest need.”

The place where, brightened by education and wild passion, I set

Out to preserve the only home I had ever known?

Was that it?  Was that a call?

And in either of these situations – who called?  Was it some God out there?

Transcendent and loose in the Universe

            Calling down:

                         “You there!  Yes, YOU in that over starched school uniform, look, I have a mission.  For YOU.  Mission – that’s not quite the right word…it’s bigger than a mere mission.  It’s a…lifestyle…no, that’s not it.  It’s a – a…I have a calling…vocare, a vocation…yes, a vocational path for you…are you Game?”

Or was it an immanent Divine Spark resting on my heart

            Waiting for the right moment to slip inside and whisper

And shout, and announce, and speak – propel?

//

I have this tendency to drift around in life

Never sure about my footing,

            About what it is I am meant to be doing…

Thinking and believing that whatever it is I am

Supposed to be doing has not been revealed, told to me,

Shared with me…is still a mystery.

My story of going to seminary is not full of or even barely littered

With the metaphors that breathe life in Neruda’s poem

In fact, I find that I am still deciphering the fire in my belly

Bit by bit…I move along, wrestling like Jacob on this

journey…

And yet, I do remember that

            I was pulled into the pulpit one Sunday in December

Many, many years ago.  Wearing a robe that was at least 10 inches too

Short so you could see my faded blue Levis and faux construction boots

poking out under from under it.

I said some words.  I don’t remember them.

The following April, I was pulled back…saying more words

And then…and then, there was buzzing, whispering, talking:

Have you ever thought of…?

            All of it led to a journey of depression and abysmal despair.

What am I to do?  Here I am – no, not like Isaiah who, in

Isaiah Chapter 6, when the Lord calls out

Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?

Says:    Here I am; send me! 

It was in no way like that…

It was more like: dangit, here I am about to graduate from college

I don’t know what to do next.  I want it to be meaningful.

Why are people talking to me about seminary?

At this very moment, I don’t even like God…please

Don’t ask anything hard of me.

But, the call was much larger than being an ordained minister.

I am reminded of E.B. White’s quote:

“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save)

the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world.

This makes it hard to plan the day.”

That is the call I received – not just to save, that endless task that

Has the potential to lead to self-righteousness and megalomania

But also to savor – to pause and take delight in, develop and feel

Compassion for – make room in myself for other ways of being

Besides my own.

            The call – to work with dedication and skill and

            To pause from work and listen to a strain of music

Save and savor.

And I have faltered. 

            I have questioned
I have lost faith

I have doubted

I have had moments of agonizing anger and desperate despair.  Of simply knowing that

Vocation has to be different from this.

            Has to be as simple as climbing into a shirt, and a pair of pants

Clocking in somewhere, anywhere, at 9 a.m. and leaving at 5 p.m. with

No volunteer commitments, no connection to a community of faith,

no thought to anyone else’s life but my own

//

            And.    

                        There is Parker Palmer saying ever so gently:

“true vocation joins self and service…” it is about responsibility to…it is

Why we are here…to serve the whole world with our whole selves.

//

Save and savor has taken me this year, to volunteering with Queer youth –

who come raw, and wanting, and loud, and tiring, and funny, and loving,

And washed in this society’s fear and pain – and they taught me

To laugh with them, cry with them – see hope for this very world

Breathing in them

            It has taken me to peering into Loveland again and again

And risking inviting the school district to try on the Reading to

End Racism program.  Just to think about it.  Talk about it.  Explore it.

And maybe…maybe

            It has taken me to pondering – for now – what would it be

Like, what would it take to have support here for Queer folks? 

Right here?  In this small town…of 50-something thousand people. 

By my calculation – that’s roughly 5000 queer people in a town,

that’s embedded in a state that’s not necessarily open and affirming

       It has taken me to trying to learn more about how we ~ as a

Community ~ could be more directly involved in the lives of those

Affected by poverty, natural disasters and systemic neglect

It has taken me on hikes when my heart – our hearts are broken

Because wars are being fought in our names – even if we do not agree

We protest, we petition, we pray

            And sometimes we - I have to take a break, be in beauty and

remember nature’s way of inspiring awe.

Breathe it in, and find renewal…find comfort. 

Touch and wrap myself in God.

//

Wake, Now, the hymnist says.  Pay attention: listen, hear, embrace

Live, and love, and sing, and pray, and dance, in the light of love.

            Do this together.

For worship…for church, is where we bring our loneliness and

Find communion

            Find ways of being

                        Find out how we can best live out our

Particular call

            Our vocation…bringing together self and service.

Becoming fully human – holding ourselves and each other

Responsible to…

…Waking, Now – paying attention, listening carefully,

Deciphering our own fires of compassion, of witnessing suffering,

Of bringing justice, of transformation…

 //

This is our ministry.  Yours and mine and ours. 

This Waking Now to transform ourselves, our church, our community…

We may use different words and images, take different paths.

But this

This being together in a hopeful,

…perhaps soon to be, covenanting community

This living in to and out of our call

to lead the congregation in singing

To engage the ministry of administration by

Serving on the Board and other committees

            To engage the ministry of education by working with

Young people and the adults in our community

To feed those in need through IHN,

to provide music each and every Sunday

To make beautiful this space,

The call to share…financial resources with Non-Government

Organizations in this your community

to lobby publicly and raise our awareness around the

issues of poverty, ability, marriage equality, housing…

… these powerful ministries…

This – all of this and more – is it.

//

 As this new church year begins.

            Take time to reflect.  To discern…to live in to and out

Of your call…your call in your family life, work life,

Your volunteer life and in your church life.

            What calls you here?

            How will you allow your Divine Spark to shine?

What in this place of worship, this place of communion

Ignites the fire in your belly?

What moved you or will move you to finally hear and proclaim:

Yes. This is what I want.

[This is how I want to share my Divine Spark]…

[This is how] I want to [serve].

Yes.

                             Amen, Ashe, & Blessed Be