I'm doing a tapestry, - have been doing so for some time.
That's because whenever I sit down at home, a dog or cat arrives on my knee within seconds, so basically it's a tapestry I only ever work at on retreat or at On Fire.
I really like it and I enjoy working on it . One day it will be something beautiful (I hope I'll finish it myself, though my first tapestry project was completing one my mother started, several years after her death...so you never know!)
And this year at On Fire I realised it was a pretty accurate parable of my spiritual life.
There are seasons when it grows appreciably, when I might even get a sense of what the picture is supposed to be....but there are also months on end when the whole knotty mess is stuffed in a bag and ignored. And it is when I am away on retreat or at On Fire that a few more stitches are added, that appreciable progress happens.
So, what have I learned about myself and God this year, as I returned thankfully to the beloved community where I have more space to be myself, and experience what it means to be loved by God than anywhere else on the planet?
For me, the big thing is around vocation.
Of all the glorious, heavy, life-changing aspirations of the Ordinal, I find most resonant for me the demand: "[priests] are to tell the story of God's love".
This is the heart of my priesthood, enacted whenever I preside at the Eucharist of course, but made real too in the joys of ministry as a Spiritual Director, and for three beautiful, intense days in my role as conference chaplain at On Fire. It is beyond precious to walk on holy ground with my siblings here, to remind them just how loved they are, sometimes to hold hard things with them or for them. They are always generous in their response to our conversations and, though I don't for a moment imagine it's all about me, I do know that working with the grain of myself enables me to be a better, less tangled Kathryn.
"Vocation", said Frederick Buechner, is "the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet," and certainly my experience is that this is a season of the deepest gladness. And my hope is that if, year on year, I keep on practising being the person I am meant to be, that practice will gradually transform aspiration into reality.
Like the tapestry, it can be achingly slow progress, but the journey itself is precious and beautiful.
1 comment:
I'm just pondering the significance of the fact that God speaks so clearly to us in the midst of these ordinary things. For me, like the tangled tapestry, my harp strings frequently get out of tune, specially when they have been broken by too much heat and end up being replaced. Yet at On Fire I get to play those strings frequently, and they respond to that, settling into concert pitch and being as they were meant to be. I am often filled with wonder at the joy of seeing people fulfilling their vocation and being the people God meant *them* to be. I take such joy in administrators being wonderful administrators, and pastors being wonderful pastors - and for me, simply leading worship and making music (in any musical style!) gives me that sense that I am "in the zone" doing what I am supposed to be doing and that brings such joy.
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