Isn't it just when we least expect it that Wisdom speaks to us, and we are changed? Yesterday was such a time for me, and Victoria's message may inspire you as it did me.
I have mentioned White Bear Unitarian Universalist Church, led by Reverend Victoria Safford. Every Sunday we can, Mom and I drive to this lovely church where we often meet my daughter-in-love, Carin, and my perfect grandchildren for the service and brunch afterward.
Victoria posed a question in yesterday's service that then produced a conversation between Carin and myself that doubled the message for me. Victoria asked, "What is your vocation?" Not, what is it you do for a living, not how do you make money or spend your time. From the root of the word, "vocation," what is your true voice? How is it that you express true Self?
Having read this blog, you know a lot about what I do. From waking to "channel" in 1983, through study and revelation, from ordination and counseling lots of folks, tripping and getting back up, I've considered this journey an expression of faith, my calling. So I thought I knew my vocation. Then I heard in my heart yesterday that this was not the core. As I listened to Victoria, I breathed and closed my eyes and heard Wisdom, my innermost voice, speak:
"Your vocation is to know God and to support others as they come to know God."
I knew it was true. This is who I Am. The simplicity struck me and I knew this was the insight that had been eluding me for weeks, perhaps months, no, all of my life.
Victoria's message included a discussion of what jobs we do to maintain our lives - work that is not our vocation. Our maintenance life feels heavy, demanding, but a necessity to support life. Out in atrium Carin and I talked about the message. I did not express my new insight. It was too soon and too new to me to speak aloud what I was feeling. Instead we talked about maintenance, essential activities, for Carin, of raising children, keeping a house, tending to marriage. And for me, managing a client schedule, running errands for Mom, shifting as our relationship changes, reacting to situations in the world that sometimes just feel wrong. Life feels big and we've learned to react to our lives and our responsibilities.
It seems to me that our goal, surely my goal, is to breathe and consider every maintenance task a meditation. Digging a ditch, washing a dish, walking a dog, each a meditation. Inspiration sometime comes during programmed meditation, but it most often comes when we least expect it. It comes in moments with a child, while driving my mother to the doctor, during a television show, in the shower. True voice speaks while we are otherwise occupied - if we intend and allow it. With such intention we become constant meditators instead of reactors to our task-filled lives.
My intention has changed. I speak to the population I now choose to serve. As guided years ago, I breathe and speak aloud my intention so the Consciousness is invested with my new vision. I attract and engage with those who are seeking God, whatever it is that they might call "God," and so I learn God better and speak my true voice.
I express my true voice not marching with it, searching, seeking, pontificating. It comes with my breath, with ease. And so it comes not only with clients, but on the street, at the co-op, with people I love and with folks who surely challenge me. Not in words, but in the energy, through the Consciousness from which I come.
For each of us, the revelation of true voice comes perfectly timed to the whole of our lives. Do I wish I had the simplicity of this back when I was struggling, before my ordination, at any time when clients challenged me or a message for my church seemed stuck in my throat? No. Well, I may have wished it, but the struggle, too, was essential. As Wisdom said: "You cannot be rescued from your struggle if what you are learning from it is necessary for your growth."
Each moment is a moment in becoming. To accept ourselves, "as we are, where we are, when we are," is our journey. True voice, our inspired vocation, is within us and reveals exactly as we are prepared to live it.
Peace, with Breath,
Phyllis
No comments:
Post a Comment