Yr. C, Wk. 30: Vocation and the Plague

For the second week in a row, we met via the Zoom app.

Mariel screen-shared a liturgy of readings and prayers with apposite images.

Yr. C theme: Living as Spiritually Mature Christians Class: Matt, Pete, first year; Christine, second year; Mariel, Gene, third year; Erica, fourth year; Scott and Susan, co - mentors. Absent: none.

Our text this week was "A Mature Theology of Vocation" in EfM's Reading and Reflection Guide. Pete, Erica, and Mariel all posted thoughtful comments to the blog before the meeting (see previous blog post).

• Christine started us off, telling us that her idea of vocation has opened up to include caring for the elderly, something that had not occurred to her until eldercare necessarily became a part of her life. Now she thinks that may be a ministry for her.
• Scott admitted that the questions intended for discernment --

  Desires: What do you long or yearn for?
  Imperatives: What should, ought, or must you do? (RRG 154)

  -- no longer gnaw at him as during the first half of his life. Around fifty, he found peace with the idea that what he was already doing -- writing, music, art, all in the service of church and school -- was what he had always been preparing to do. At 61, he's not so concerned with "vocation" as formerly.
• Susan agreed, and quipped, "I'm okay now with being a slacker."
• Mariel can't remember ever having a feeling of "calling" in her life or professional career, but feels that she has learned to be open to possibilities. In her comments posted before the meeting, Mariel wrote that praying the Psalter and using the Book of Common Prayer daily are two ways that she plans to keep structure in her life when retirement moves her away from the structure of a daily job.
• Christine cited the essay's expression of peoples' doubts that the "bits and pieces" of life can all fit together (RRG 152). For Christine, an artist who has worked with collage, looking retrospectively for a pattern among bits and pieces seems an intriguing challenge.
• Erica had written before our meeting about those "bits and pieces" and anxiety about seeing "the big picture." She told how a Buddhist sage was bemused when she asked about "calling" in this sense, telling her, essentially, if you want to be monk, then, okay, you're a monk. Erica also brought up her fascination with the Roman Catholic idea that one is "called" to marriage as to priesthood, an idea that resurfaced again and again during our meeting.
• Matt, too, saw his vocation clearly in retrospect. So much of his life was spent in the Church, working with youth. He found confirmation in the Book of Common Prayer, in the catechism, where "the people" are listed first as the ministers of God.
• Gene remembered back to graduation from college, when he had on his desk two stacks: applications to seminaries, and applications to law schools. Though he chose law school, the feeling of vocation has never left, and now he wonders if his calling is being realized now, "just being here" for friends with acute needs at this time.
• Pete continues to wrestle with the question he asked a few weeks ago, "Is it enough to be a good person?" As he wrote prior to this meeting, his participation in EfM is opening him up to the idea of a communal aspect integral to Christian vocation.

Theological Reflection

Erica introduced us to a poem by Mary Karr, published in 1993, "Etchings from the Plague Years." The speaker in the poem lifts her eyes from "the valley" of an art history textbook open to a medieval image of plague victims, to see a "frail" young man on her subway car apparently suffering serious illness. He becomes for her an image of "everyone [she has] ever loved." When he gets off at her stop, she thinks the imperative: "Offer him your hand. Help him climb the stair."

In our reflection on the poem, we found a great deal of energy at the nexus of Medieval plague, the poet's personal memories, and the moment present in that subway car. We shared personal stories when past or future became present in an instant: seeing the toddler son in the grown-up groom at the wedding; the young daughter dancing happily to the altar on Ash Wednesday to receive the reminder "to dust you shall return."

We found cultural analogs in the interweaving of prequels with sequels in the Star Wars series; a phrase from Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep about the texture of men's flesh in the beautiful flower of the orchid; the mingling of past and present, life and death, in Our Town; and, in the death-haunted comedy Harold and Maude (1970), how the young man Harold learns from octogenarian Maude that love doesn't stay fixed to one object, but embraces all of life.

Perhaps cued by the poem's opening line about images of death printed "in the valley" of the open textbook, we thought of the valley of dry bones (Ezekiel 37.1-14), text assigned in the lectionary for the Sunday worship two days before our meeting. In that story, the tragedy of the past and the promise of the future are both glimpsed in the present, tied to a call for action.

We reached some insights. Susan saw the sacredness of small things. Gene observed, "She goes beyond just helping one boy to others in her past ('everyone I’ve ever loved') to every person in God’s kingdom…. A communal thing." Mariel related the TR to the evening's discussion of vocation: "Is teaching her vocation? In the end, she’s roped into doing something."

[Mariel's phrase later reminded Scott that the Greek word for "church," ekklesia, means literally, a "calling out" (same as "vocation"); or, as Mariel and the theologian Ronald Rolheiser both reimagined it, this "calling" is like "being roped into" action, as illustrated by the parable of the Good Samaritan. See "Spirituality Needs Community," Scott's blogpost about Rolheiser's book The Holy Longing.]

Collect for a Call to Action
Eternal God, when Your hand set Ezekiel in a desolate valley to proclaim hope, dry bones rose to new life; may we, like Ezekiel, look up from our personal valleys to act as Your hand and voice to those who need comfort. Amen

Mariel concluded with a prayer.

Next Meeting: Scott will lead worship via Zoom, and Matt will provide a source for our TR.