Following A Calling And Sticking With It
Question: Have you ever said to God – “You want me to do what?”
When I give workshops, I often go around the room and ask people to give a reason they have for not praying. This is actually pretty easy for folks. They usually respond by saying, “I don’t have enough time.” Or “I don’t know how to pray.” Or,“I am not sure God answers prayers.” But I will never forget the woman who said, “I am afraid of what God will ask me to do.” And I thought, “You know, that is a darn good reason to not pray.” Because it implies that you know that power of prayer.
The thing about “You want me to do what?” is it’s not really a question. It’s a statement: “You want me to change. I don’t want to change.”
- From a talk by Bill Kreidler, a “Released Friend” – a Quaker following a leading from a talk on the “Seeker”s Journey” at the Friends (Quaker) General Conference in 1994. You can read more of his address here.
Hiker At Gate
(Available Original)
Many readers may find the thoughts offered below on answering a call irrelevant to their lives. Many people live completely satisfying lives without ever hearing a call or following a calling. The notes below are meant for the others. I turn to these reflections in my own periods of despair and bewilderment.
Much of what appears below was inspired by an interview I did in 2002 of Fritz Hull, co-founder, with his wife Vivian, of The Whidbey Institute on Whidbey Island, Washington state. (You can read excerpts from that interview here). To the extent I've borrowed his words, they also accurately reflect my own experience.
A calling is a work of love. It makes your heart sing. It nourishes you. It makes you thankful for being alive.
You surrender to that call. The call is both graceful and demanding. It requires wholeheartedness. Devotion. That is the harsh demand of it, and at the same time the promise that we are going to be okay. Grace.
The call is not general, but it is a call to me, to my life.
The determining factor in whether or not you persist with a calling will depend on your ability to protect and focus your energy. Energy leakage is the opposite of wholeheartedness; it is whatever steals your devotion, whatever drags you down or sideways. It is whatever distracts or discourages you. Sooner or later, you will bump up against the inescapable questions, “Do you have faith? How deep is your love?”
If it truly is a calling, if you are truly following a path of love, you will hang in. If your calling resonates deep inside, if something tells you that “this path is right for me,” you will endure the times of bewilderment, setbacks and challenges.
As the years progress, you will repeatedly experience setbacks followed by success, by new growth, sometimes in unexpected directions. But spring will follow winter, and that spring will be beautiful and rejuvenating. Everything beautiful takes time to grow and it happens in cycles, not in straight lines. With the arrival of spring you will once again find that what you endured was worth it.
And support does show up in magical ways. The teaching of wise elders through the centuries is to give of yourself wholeheartedly for a higher purpose, for the sake of "other", whatever that other is for you -– people for instance, or nature, or art -- and what we give to that other will come back to us.
You can't emabark on a work of love expecting others to throw a parade for you on Main Street. The ultimate reward has to come from the joy inside, not from the confirmation of others. The confirmation by others may eventually come, but if you require it to stick with the work, you will give up way before they get around to organizing your parade.
. . .
Below, the two-page spread of this entry from the upcoming Heron Dance book, Nurturing The Song Within.
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