What's Your Calling?

I was sitting on the concrete floor of my new apartment in China, watching the carpet man install our new floor. Blue, as I recall… He worked quietly, quickly, with precision, cutting the shape and fastening it down. I asked him, “How long have you been installing carpets?” He was only 20 years old, but he started doing this 4 years ago. “Do you like this job?” He gave me a blank stare. “I mean, do you enjoy working with carpets? Is it satisfying?” I’ll never forget what he told me—“It’s carpet. I don’t like it, or not like it, I just have to do it, to live.”

And then it hit me like a ton of bricks. He knew nothing of choice in his job. He never got to ask the questions—“What do I want to do with my life? What are my gifts, and skills, and how can I develop them? What is my calling?” Until that moment, I think there was a naïve part of me that unconsciously wanted to believe that he was as passionate about carpet as I was about my work in China.

So what percentage of the world really DOES have the privilege of asking what we might desire for our vocation? 1%? 2%?

The fact that it took me till age 25 to begin understanding this, means that my culture, my background, my family’s financial situation put me in another category. A category where college was assumed, assessments were available to guide occupational self-discovery, and my desires were actually a real option for me. In fact, I’ve gotten to ask that question SEVERAL times throughout my life, in small & large ways.

(The point of this little post is not guilt….)

Nor am I talking about how we shouldn’t complain when we don’t like what we are doing. ALL of us, at times, have to do things we’d rather not do, and we’d all like to learn to find JOY in the midst of those undesirable, mundane things. But I’m asking—HOW DO WE DEFINE WORK—LIFE CALLING—VOCATION as Christians?

I don't have an answer...yet. But here’s my thought: HOWEVER we define WORK, from a Christian perspective, as people made in God’s image with different gifts to bless & grow His Kingdom

...that our definition has to work for the CEO on Wallstreet as well as it does for the sheepherder in Uganda.

Would love your thoughts!

"The safest place for ships is in the harbor, but that's not why ships were built."

My Little Princess... (Or Should I Say)... My Growing Princess

Ellie had a great time at her party!

Waiting for Pin the Crown on the Princess















No peeking!






































Princesses decorating their crowns and wands...

































Every princess had their picture taken--

Princess LaRisa



















Princess Alex



















Princess Ashley



















Princess Ellie!



















Princess Eloise



















Princess Elise



















Princess (and cousin) Emma



















Princess (cousin) Alli



















Princess Kathryn













































Aunt Julie was our primary photographer... thanks!















Thanks Dingo & Becca!





















































Love this shot!


































That's my girl!

Addiction IV: What Does Growth Look Like?

What does spiritual growth, i.e., the process of being freed from addictions unto a heart that can be loved and love, look like?

May continues,
"It is important to note that the spiritual growth process involves far more relinquishment than acquisition. In our culture, we are conditioned to expect growth to involve acquisition of new facts and understanding... We have, in a way , become attached to the very process of expanding our attachments.

...But spiritual growth is different. it cannot be packaged, programmed, or taught. Although some new facts may help us along the way, the essential process is one of transformation, not education."

"Here is the most fundamental and critical distinction between simple human desire and truly corrosive attachment. The wanting, yearning, longing quality of pure desire is natural and God-given. It is not only necessary for life; it also lends a rich open-endedness to existence, a lack of complete satisfaction that is powerfully creative and, in many ways, joyful. But the grasping, clinging, possessive quality of attachment is something very different. It is restrictive, not creative, imperative instead of enjoyable. As William Blake said, "rather than binding ourselves to joy, we must kiss it as it flies."

Is growth a steady assent towards maturity?? (Wouldn't that be nice???!)

"Spiritual growth is by no means a steady process. Each time we touch the mystery of what is most real, we can flee back into "normality with some deeper layer of attachment threatened. Often upon return we may experience a backlash, a rebound of self-centeredness and desperate attempts to control things. We may find prayer more difficult at such times, and we are almost certain to invent new representations to take the place of those we have had to relinquish. The choices we make on such occasions become very important. Although they do not by themselves determine any outcomes, they do create the patterns of our freedom and slavery, and these, interwoven with God's patterns of grace, form our unique tapestries of spiritual growth."

Are there tools in the process?

"Prayer, scripture, sacraments, spiritual community, and self-examination can all be sources of guidance as we seek to make such choices. But finally, even here at the heart of our human freedom, we are dependent upon the mercy of God."

...

There is so much more in this book!! ... including an excellent chapter on GRACE, and the role of faith in the growth process. But for now, I must move on to this semester's studies... If you would like to hear more, read the book for yourself!

Addiction & Grace: Love and Spirituality in the Healing of Addictions, by Gerald May.

Happy Birthday Ellie

Happy Birthday my baby girl!

At 1...



















2...














3...














4...














5...



















I can't believe you are 6!
Pictures from the Princess Party to come...

Addition III: Returning Home

What is it like to begin, like the Prodigal Son, to return home? To recognize the attachments that kill desire for God, and to run the other way?

...continuation of thought from Gerald May's chapter on The Theological Nature of Addiction

When we realize how our desires have been misplaced, and how we continue to choose those things which keep us bound, "we begin to reclaim our primary desire for God. But at this point, after years of displacing desire and of adapting to addictions elsewhere, home will not seem normal. Thus we respond to God's homeward call with a mixture of hope and fear. Something in us knows that this home is where we belong, but in many ways it also feels like alien territory. the journey homeward, the process of homemaking in God, involves withdrawal from addictive behaviors that have become normal for us."

"We feel no real consolation when we experience the inevitable withdrawal symptoms that accompany letting go our attachments. There is real pain here. If I am withdrawing from addiction to a relationship or possession, it will not easy my sense of loss to know that the person of thing will continue to be present in my life or in my heart. I will not even want to hear that my love will be stronger if I let it go. What I cling to most is my use, my idolization of that person or thing."

"When we first reclaim our spiritual longing, we usually do not know that the journey homeward will involve such relinquishment, that the homemaking process will be so painful. Perhaps this is just well. No that such knowledge would cause us to choose against God; on the contrary, I think the greater danger is that those who think they understand the process are likely to try to make it happen on their own by engaging in false austerities and love-denying self-deprivations. They will not wait for God's timing; they will rush ahead of grace."

Do you try to make change happen on your own?

...More coming...

Addiction II: Addicted to God?

Aren't you going a little overboard, Tracie, in saying that everyone is addicted? Is there really a harmful thing about too much chocolate, or too much humor... I mean you are saying these things (insert your own) could be harming my relationship with God?

Chocolate and laughter are good! But only you can answer if your activities, attitudes, and relationships are freely chosen, or are compelled. In the first, the motivation is love. In the second, slavery.

PAUSE. The following section will be lost on you if you really don't feel you have any addictions... so it would be helpful if you could reflect, before proceeding, about those things that kill your desires... anesthetize your heart... keep you from connecting deeply with God.

The following quotes come from May's chapter on The Theological Nature of Addiction. Fascinating!

"The spiritual significance of addiction is not just that we lose freedom through attachment to things, nor even that things so easily become our ultimate concerns. Of much more importance is that we try to fulfill our longing for God through objects of attachment."

"The more we become accustomed to seeking spiritual satisfaction through things other than God, the more abnormal and stressful it becomes to look for God directly."

These means can be so subtle...
Going to church can be more about appearances, or getting a feel good fix from serving, than connecting with a Person.

Reading your Bible can be more about feeling spiritual because you did your duty, or the satisfaction of fulfilling routine, or making you feel smart, than spending time with a Person.

Prayer can be more about the cathartic experience of processing your burdens, or feeling good about your spirituality, than talking and listening to a Person.

So does God just want us to become addicted to Him?

"I think God refuses to be an object for attachment because God desires full love, not addiction. Love born of true freedom, love free from attachment, requires that we search for a deepening awareness of God, just as God freely reaches out to us.

In addition, full love for God means we must turn to God over and against other things. If our choice of God is to be made with integrity, we must first have felt other attractions and chosen, painfully, not to make them our gods. True love, then is not only born of freedom it is also born of difficult choice. A mature and meaningful love must say something like, "I have experienced other goodnesses, and they are beautiful, but it is You, my true heart's desire, whom I choose above all."

...more tomorrow

Addiction I: Desire & Freedom

I wrote the last few posts in advance, setting them to post in the future. That means that though I've said I was going give some thoughts and quotes from Addiction & Grace, I now find myself under a pile of reading assignments!

But I think these thoughts are so fascinating, I'm still going to try!

What is addiction?
"While repression stifles desire, addiction attaches desire, bonds and enslaves the energy of desire to certain behaviors, things, or people... Addiction then is a state of compulsion, obsession or preoccupation that enslaves a person's will and desire. It sidetracks and eclipses the energy of our deepest desire, for love and goodness..." (namely, God.)

To be unattached to the things that addict us is not freedom FROM desire, but freedom OF desire.

So, you say you're not an alcoholic, or a heroin addict. What does this have to do with you?

It's about naming the things that BIND you, so that your heart is free to be loved, and to love.

More tomorrow...