CALLING

Anna and I just got back from a local church where I dropped off my materials for a future speaking gig. The ladies in the church office were dying, ooooing and ahhhing over Anna. When I told them that she's a working dog in training the oooos and ahhhhs got louder, longer. "She has a higher calling on her life," I told them.

I've been telling that to Anna, too. I kiss her soft ears and snuggle into her scruffy neck and say, "You have a higher calling on your life, Girl." She sighs, snuggles closer to me and inevitably starts snoring.

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Today, as I carried Anna down the church steps, I thought about Anna's potential calling: helping someone turn on lights, put on a coat, grab the phone: a life of companionship, a life of service, of working. I began to wonder if this calling would feel at all glorious or special or ordained to Anna. I wondered if she'd ever resent being a working dog, if she'd ever wish she could've just been a lazy ol' pet like our beloved black and white Shihtzu, Sammy.

I've been thinking a lot about callings in my own life lately. What is my life's calling? What is a calling? What is God calling me to do with the next few years of my life now that all of my kids are almost all in full time school? Will God use me and all of my gifts? Will I get a chance to make a difference to follow a calling instead of just bringing home the bacon? Do I get to choose my calling, or does the call choose me?

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Going to seminary seems to be the next step for me. I'll take this step in the fall as a way of beginning to answer (or continuing to ask) some of these questions. Recently during a visit to a Chicago seminary, a group of potential students and I discussed the meaning of The Call. A facilitator listed the following words on a white board:

I want you!, Trepidation, Opposite of what you might expect, Hear, Hope!, Hopes, Process, Compulsion, Certainty/Uncertainty, God's dreams, Purpose, Intuitive, ALL, Gifts, Action, Illumination, More than a job, Integration, Surrender, Grace, Hear & Here

As we listed and dreamed, I imagined serving God and changing the world with a glorious higher calling, furthering God's purpose and design. Being hands and feet of the divine in a world where God has no hands and feet.

Anna is helping me realize that a higher calling - like the one I've been imagining lately - might look a little different than I've perceived. After all, Jesus was one for turning things on end: the rich he said are poor, the weak are strong. Life and Light and Resurrection come through, because of, during death. And, so, higher callings - in Christ's economy - may be what I perceive as lower, more humble, servile positions . . . as places in my life where I let go instead of trying harder, places where I stoop down to kiss a road-rashed knee, places where friends need listening ears or prayer, places where I am still and quiet and waiting for words, listening for the call of the moment.

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Right now I'm trying to live in this place of surrender, doing what God has for me to do today: loving my kids and husband, being here at home organizing and wiping things, creating a sacred space where family and friends can gather for meals and talks and games and stories. To me, Anna's life looks like a uniquely purposeful, called life. It seems as if she has a Higher Calling on her head. But, to her - perhaps - it just feels like she has to be more obedient, more available, more selfless than other dogs. Maybe she resents a call to serve more loyally, to avail herself to the needs of others. When I look into her big brown eyes - eyes that want to please me and love me unconditionally - I realize that Anna has already surrendered to her call. And, I'm just beginning.

"When you are invited, take the lowest place,
so that when your host comes, he will say to you,
"Friend, move up to a better place."
Then you will be honored in the presence of all."

-Luke 14:10

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