whispers of more

Tonight, I ventured downtown to meet with Mary, my advisor for the pastoral care resident position at Camp Fraser. In addition to this very important relationship, I also feel very connected to Mary in terms of my spiritual journey. In a sense, I feel as though Mary’s experience is kindred with mine, because it seems she’s already experienced so similar a calling to what I am now discerning, and because our unique circumstances are so familiar to one another’s.

So Mary speaks my language. She knows exactly what I need to hear and when I need to hear it. And she is able to make me really understand, and she listens to my doubts and understands even as she tells me they are groundless, and she empowers me because she sees my spiritual gifts. Which I don’t, yet.

So in our conversation tonight, we touched on multiple points that I’m still trying to absorb. Like, this summer isn’t about whether I have pastoral gifts, she says, this summer is about accepting them. There is no question that I have gifts here, according to Mary. I wish I could see what she is so clear about.

But in deciding where I would hold Camp Fraser Friday Debrief sessions, we went into the sanctuary. It was evening and it was dark and Mary put the lights on only in the pulpit… and then she invited me to stand behind it. And the place where it is holy revealed more to me. I stood from behind the pulpit, illuminated, and looked out into the rows of pews, the vaulted ceilings, the intricate stained glass. And I imagined people’s faces. And I had my breath taken away.

The sanctuary has never been such a place of peace before. And yet, amidst that peace, I felt a tiny twinge of fear, because I think that I can hear God whispering, but I don’t understand why. Why would He call me to this, when I feel so unworthy? So incapable? I almost said to a friend today, that I don’t think I deserve to represent the name of Christ. I’m so utterly human. I know that none of us is deserving, and yet I feel that I am even less so. Like Isaiah before he answered God’s call, I am completely unworthy – RUINED- with “unclean lips”.

So I left the church, wondering at this new revelation, this further step toward acceptance of God’s plan. And as I stood on the metro platform, watching all the different, beautiful faces walk by, the world tilted on its axis again, and words I read months ago suddenly became truth for me. Shane Claiborne says that Jesus gives us new eyes, and with these, we can look into the eyes of those we don’t even like and see the One we love. Well, I wouldn’t fathom to say that I’m where Shane Claiborne is, but I started to see a little of what he meant. I’ve never seen the face of a stranger and thought, “Beautiful, glorious work of God,” before. But as so many people streamed by me—with their children, their significant others, alone; in their work clothes, the only clothes they had, clothes that didn’t match; with their burdensome bodies, and limps, and some with their smooth, proud, steady gait—I thought, You are beautiful, and I can see God in every ‘flaw’ and ‘imperfection’—each of which He intended. And it occurred to me that while this was a major step for me in learning to TRULY VALUE CREATION, it must be remarkably easier to see God in the face of the ones that you don’t know, and will likely never know, than to see the face of God in that of the ones you know and do not like. There is always more.

As I watched people walk by, I saw a face that looked like my friend D’s significant other, whom I’ve only seen in a photograph once, and then another man who was slightly familiar… and then I saw my friend D! What a beautiful surprise, to first see God in strangers, and then to see friends among them. God is so clever. He really knows what He is doing.

I don’t. But I’m trying to learn. And I’m starting to hear the whispers of more.