In between running back and forth from my desk to a printer in the filing room behind my desk, feeding it envelopes 10 or 15 at a time, I thought I'd share these thoughts on the whole of life as "mission" that arrived in my email from the Henri Nouwen society this morning.
Fulfilling a Mission
When we live our lives as missions, we become aware that there is a home from where we are sent and to where we have to return. We start thinking about ourselves as people who are in a faraway country to bring a message or work on a project, but only for a certain amount of time. When the message has been delivered and the project is finished, we want to return home to give an account of our mission and to rest from our labours.
One of the most important spiritual disciplines is to develop the knowledge that the years of our lives are years "on a mission."
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Catching Up
Okay, where to start? It’s been a while since I did an actual update here instead of directing you to things worth reading, or sharing stuff others had written… My head is feeling clogged, full-to-bursting and I need to write some of it down. (I blog because it’s therapeutic for me… helps me to process and release stuff if I simply write it somewhere, add it to the general consciousness instead of bearing the weight in my head, alone.)
Last night before I went to sleep, I did a writing exercise that Rob Bell describes in the footnotes of his new book “Sex God”. I’ve also heard Rob preach about this exercise. (For those who are wondering, I haven’t read “Sex God” yet, though some of my youth did read it about a week ago, and recommended it. I was flipping through the footnotes looking for a reference to something else, and came across the exercise that I’d heard Rob preach, and was delighted to find it in a more organized format.) To be honest, I did the exercise in the hopes that by unloading some of the stuff I was thinking about, I’d be able to sleep a bit better. It helped a little. Not a lot. If you’re ever awake at 3:30 a.m. and wondering if you’re the only one in the world, take comfort. I’m usually awake at that time for a while.
Megs and I took advantage of the fact that the weather is finally catching on to the fact that spring has arrived, and, after a quick errand at the Asian market to buy supplies for a Thai meal that I’m cooking with a friend, for some other friends this weekend (speaking of the Asian market, we’re also looking for an East Indian market – does anyone know of something like this in Calgary?), we headed to Peter’s for hamburgers and fries. (For those of you who don’t know Calgary, Peter’s is legendary – drive in or walk up only, and great ginormous portions of food.) We quite thoroughly enjoyed sitting outside as we ate.
After dinner, we headed out to see a movie… “In the Land of Women”. Not hugely profound, but funny, and at times deep. We mutually agreed that it was a worth the money.
I’m headed out of town for a day and a half this weekend, taking one of my youth girls with me, to visit some other friends. I’m looking forward to the time, but also feeling some tension because of some stuff in my youth girls’ life lately, stuff that we probably need to talk about. I’m having a hard time figuring out the balance between friend, and advisor/leader in this particular relationship, and figuring out when to say the hard stuff and trust that there is relationship there that will support what may need to be said.
I’m thinking about an upcoming youth retreat that we’re holding, part-way through May. I think I’d maybe like to do some of the teaching, depending on what topic we decide to focus on, but the idea makes me nervous, particularly since the youth pastor I’m working with is long accomplished at teaching, and my own style would be very different from his. It’s been a long time since I did any extended teaching on my own. I’ve taught Sunday school several times for this same group of youth in the last while, and sometimes it seems to go well, sometimes it doesn’t. I’m struggling with the fact that I see life and relationship with God quite differently in a lot of ways from the church that I am involved with, and while I want to introduce our youth to a deeper relationship with God, through the work of the Spirit, I still feel tentative at best in figuring that out in my own life, and am not at all sure how to begin to communicate some of these things to the teenagers that I am involved with. Pray for us the next week or two as we meet to hash out a theme for the weekend, and as I listen for the spirit and seek to discern whether this is my time to open up and teach and share my journey with these young people.
I’m still waiting to figure out what comes next in my life. My tax return should be coming through in the next few weeks. It’ll get stuck quite nicely in a bank account, and hopefully in late June or early July I’ll be buying a car. That feels like a step in the right direction, towards independence. I’ve committed (at least to myself) to stay at my current job at least until I’ve been there a year. That happens September 12th. I have concert tickets for September 18th, so I’ll at least be in Calgary until then. From there, who knows? I’d like to either do an internship somewhere, or maybe travel for a couple of months over the course of the next year – maybe go see Megs once she settles back into Pakistan, maybe some time in Europe, who knows?
Oh, and I added another book to my reading list. I finished Anne Lamott’s new book over the weekend. I have to say that I was somewhat disappointed in this one. Though the title alludes to the book being “thoughts on faith,” I found this to be her most political, least “spiritual” book so far, and felt after a while like I was being preached at, and it began to grate on me. I still enjoyed her thoughts, she still made me laugh, and even made me think, but this time it was, as I say, more grating. More of a “you need to see the world my way, or you’re wrong” sort of attitude.
Okay, with all of that off my chest, I’m going back to doing other things. Work remains slow, giving me the time necessary to write a long post like this…
Last night before I went to sleep, I did a writing exercise that Rob Bell describes in the footnotes of his new book “Sex God”. I’ve also heard Rob preach about this exercise. (For those who are wondering, I haven’t read “Sex God” yet, though some of my youth did read it about a week ago, and recommended it. I was flipping through the footnotes looking for a reference to something else, and came across the exercise that I’d heard Rob preach, and was delighted to find it in a more organized format.) To be honest, I did the exercise in the hopes that by unloading some of the stuff I was thinking about, I’d be able to sleep a bit better. It helped a little. Not a lot. If you’re ever awake at 3:30 a.m. and wondering if you’re the only one in the world, take comfort. I’m usually awake at that time for a while.
Megs and I took advantage of the fact that the weather is finally catching on to the fact that spring has arrived, and, after a quick errand at the Asian market to buy supplies for a Thai meal that I’m cooking with a friend, for some other friends this weekend (speaking of the Asian market, we’re also looking for an East Indian market – does anyone know of something like this in Calgary?), we headed to Peter’s for hamburgers and fries. (For those of you who don’t know Calgary, Peter’s is legendary – drive in or walk up only, and great ginormous portions of food.) We quite thoroughly enjoyed sitting outside as we ate.
After dinner, we headed out to see a movie… “In the Land of Women”. Not hugely profound, but funny, and at times deep. We mutually agreed that it was a worth the money.
I’m headed out of town for a day and a half this weekend, taking one of my youth girls with me, to visit some other friends. I’m looking forward to the time, but also feeling some tension because of some stuff in my youth girls’ life lately, stuff that we probably need to talk about. I’m having a hard time figuring out the balance between friend, and advisor/leader in this particular relationship, and figuring out when to say the hard stuff and trust that there is relationship there that will support what may need to be said.
I’m thinking about an upcoming youth retreat that we’re holding, part-way through May. I think I’d maybe like to do some of the teaching, depending on what topic we decide to focus on, but the idea makes me nervous, particularly since the youth pastor I’m working with is long accomplished at teaching, and my own style would be very different from his. It’s been a long time since I did any extended teaching on my own. I’ve taught Sunday school several times for this same group of youth in the last while, and sometimes it seems to go well, sometimes it doesn’t. I’m struggling with the fact that I see life and relationship with God quite differently in a lot of ways from the church that I am involved with, and while I want to introduce our youth to a deeper relationship with God, through the work of the Spirit, I still feel tentative at best in figuring that out in my own life, and am not at all sure how to begin to communicate some of these things to the teenagers that I am involved with. Pray for us the next week or two as we meet to hash out a theme for the weekend, and as I listen for the spirit and seek to discern whether this is my time to open up and teach and share my journey with these young people.
I’m still waiting to figure out what comes next in my life. My tax return should be coming through in the next few weeks. It’ll get stuck quite nicely in a bank account, and hopefully in late June or early July I’ll be buying a car. That feels like a step in the right direction, towards independence. I’ve committed (at least to myself) to stay at my current job at least until I’ve been there a year. That happens September 12th. I have concert tickets for September 18th, so I’ll at least be in Calgary until then. From there, who knows? I’d like to either do an internship somewhere, or maybe travel for a couple of months over the course of the next year – maybe go see Megs once she settles back into Pakistan, maybe some time in Europe, who knows?
Oh, and I added another book to my reading list. I finished Anne Lamott’s new book over the weekend. I have to say that I was somewhat disappointed in this one. Though the title alludes to the book being “thoughts on faith,” I found this to be her most political, least “spiritual” book so far, and felt after a while like I was being preached at, and it began to grate on me. I still enjoyed her thoughts, she still made me laugh, and even made me think, but this time it was, as I say, more grating. More of a “you need to see the world my way, or you’re wrong” sort of attitude.
Okay, with all of that off my chest, I’m going back to doing other things. Work remains slow, giving me the time necessary to write a long post like this…
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