Waiting For My Parade

The preparations had been made. Face paint applied. Stilts mounted. Marching band in place. In just moments I would be leading the march for peace across downtown Guatemala City, the nation’s capital.

Only I didn’t know it yet.

This is a true story.

 On Friday morning, I took my place at the veryfrontof a very long line of festively dressed purveyors of peace and began to march, smile, and wave like a reluctant beauty queen down the streets of Guatemala City.

Friday commemorated International Day of Peace worldwide, and my friends at AVP were participating in a rambunctious parade of peace.

I was just along for the ride.

That is, until the grand marshal, who was wearing a clown suit, discovered I was holding the biggest, most informative banner of all of the parade participants and pushed me to the front of the line to serve as the vanguard in the victory against violence march with my friend Luis.

At. The front. Of. The. ENTIRE. Parade.

Was I amused? Most definitely. But was this what I was expecting or wanting? Not at all.

You see, I love the work of AVP. I love the idea of peace building. But it’s not really my thing. Not really my passion.

I was there in the front of the line, heralding the peace, but my heart wasn’t in it. I was just a warm body. A filler.

It wasn’t my parade.

A few rows behind me, there was a young girl dressed as a jester shaking her hips to the hypnotic rhythm of the marching band. Every time I glanced back, she was engaging the crowd, shimmying this way and that, and laughing like crazy. Joy spilled out of her.

This was her parade.

And the parade of thousands of school age kids who met us in the park by forming a human chain, marching, clanging and combating violence with passion and creativity, communication and collaboration, dignity and dancing. (Bonus: check out this awesome video of the marching band and dancers!)

Don’t get me wrong; I love peace building and creativity and especially dancing, but that day’s parade, that day’s demonstration, was not my passion.

And that’s okay.

I remember when people used to call me the “recycle girl.” I would get so frustrated when people would boil down my passion to create change, to work for a better, more just world, into the tiny box of a word called a “hobby.”  Like some people like biking, running on the beach, or building model airplanes; I just happened to like social justice.

No, social justice, creation care, and empowering the poor are not my hobbies or Facebook interests. They are part of a calling that hasn’t changed with leaving my job at Plant With Purpose. The location has changed. The exact method has changed, but my heart hasn’t.

I still want to be an agent of love and transformation. I still want to be someone who fosters dignity for the defenseless. Who shines light on our true identities as children of Christ. Who empowers people to use their gifts and talents to create a more just, more joyous world.

Right now, I just don’t know exactly how to do this. Where to spend my time. What projects to join. Right now, it doesn’t feel like I’m doing a good job at my calling.

It feels a lot like I’m carrying someone else’s sign in someone else’s parade. A worthwhile parade; just not mine.

I’m learning to smile. To find joy in their parade. In their marching and stilts and merengue music. In the peace that’s being fostered. In the light that shines.

I’m learning my “hobbies” and interests don’t define me. My job doesn’t define me. Even my values don’t define me. Only LOVE defines me. I am the riches. I am the treasure. I am the pearl of great price.

I remember this as I pray for patience and discernment as I wait for my own parade, my own next step in what God has called me to do. In the meantime, I pray for the humility to help others put on a good parade. For the faith and hope to not give up on my own calling that has brought me to Guatemala.  On a scene that I can’t yet see clearly, that lingers dark and formless before me.

I pray, I wait, and I grab the corner of the banner, smile, wave, and continue on.

What the heck am I going to read to get my life together?

Today I'd like to share two of my favorite books for the young and the "too empowered"--those twentysomethings who are wrestling with vocation, calling, and whether they should move back in with their parents after college.

1. What the Heck Am I Going to Do with My Life? by Margaret Feinberg

With grace and wisdom, Margaret explores passion, talent, abilities, and vocation in God's Kingdom. This book is practical, readable, and chock-full of nuggets of wisdom.

When I first read it about a year ago, my favorite part of the book was learning I wasn't the only one who didn't have it all together. As anti-hipster as it sounds, I'm just going to say that sometimes it is darn good to know that I don't have a monopoly on self-obsessed neuroses, that I'm not utterly, uniquely screwed up.

As I've been re-reading Margaret's book over the last couple of weeks, I've resonated more with her constant call to submit our callings, vocations, and desires to God.

She reminds us,

“The fact that you have a passion for something doesn’t mean that desire is meant to rule you; your passions are always subject to the cross.”

I’ve been learning this the hard way this year, as I’ve felt God saying to me, “Your job at Plant With Purpose is not yours to hold on to. Your passion is not yours to hold on to.”

Margaret writes,

“He designed us to live openhanded lives so that the passions we possess don’t possess us."

Inviting others to join in the transformational work of Plant With Purpose has been such a passion for me, a joy for me, but if He is calling me elsewhere, I want to be willing to open my hands and follow His lead.

2. Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation by Parker Palmer

I love Parker's views on this topic because he frames our search for vocation as the search to recover our 'true selves.'

"The figure calling to me all those years was, I believe, what Thomas Merton calls "true self." This is not the ego self that wants to inflate us (or deflate us, another from of self-distortion), not the intellectual self that wants to hover above the mess of life in clear but ungrounded ideas, not the ethical self that wants to live by some abstract moral code. It is the self-planted in us by the God who made us in God's own image-- the self that wants nothing more, or less, than for us to be who we were created to be.

True self is true friend. One ignores or rejects such friendship only at one's peril.”

Ever the intellecter and introspector, I appreciated Parker's emphasis on self-examination and learning to receive God's love. 

He writes,

“Our deepest calling is to grow into our own authentic self-hood, whether or not it conforms to some image of who we ought to be. As we do so, we will not only find the joy that every human being seeks--we will also find our path of authentic service in the world.”

He also offers a candid, yet hopeful discussion on depression, burnout, and healing, which has been a reality in my life in the lives of many of my close friends. Parker also authored one of my favorite, paradigm-shifting quotes on weakness: 

"We will become better teachers not by trying to fill the potholes in our souls but by knowing them so well that we can avoid falling into them.”

If you've been thinking about vocation, calling, and what the heck you're going to do with your life, I highly recommend joining Margaret and Parker on their journeys to discover God's call on their lives. They are both well worth the read.

Have you read either of these books? What books or resources on vocation and calling would you recommend?

On Calling and Cultivating Mustard Seeds

Today we continue our weeklong focus on vocation here on Memoirs of Algeisha. To read the first post, click here. I'm excited to delve into vocation, calling, passion, and obedience together.

On Calling and Cultivating Mustard Seeds

“Oh, so you’re completely messed up right now,” she replied when I told her about the study abroad program I had just returned from, more of a statement than a question. She sat cross-legged in the corner of our on-campus apartment, the soles of her thrift store sneakers worn and ragged, unaltered like her gray-streaked hair.

My friends turned to me in a whoosh of curls, highlights, and curiosity.

“Yes, I’m completely messed up,” I responded, unapologetically.

“Wait, what?” “Yeah, Aly, what?” My friends wondered, but I offered nothing more.

She gave me a smile and I knew right then that we shared a secret language, a code.

A code that would bring me back from the edge.

***

I have a friend and mentor who is incredible with college students. When I came back from a traumatic study abroad experience, she was the only one who understood right off the bat. She saw my questions about God and the church and U.S. foreign policy as engagement of my faith, not a rejection of it. She saw my anger as a sign of compassion, not rebellion. She listened, she validated, she understood my shopping guilt and inability to open my Bible. She challenged me to move beyond the anger. She called me out of wallowing. She demonstrated a life of compassion and intentionality. She gave me hope in the body of Christ.

When I graduated she gave me a present, a small, glass picture frame that at first glance looks empty. But if you look hard enough, in the center of the white paper backing is a small yellowish dot—a mustard seed. It’s tiny, smaller than I pictured when we recited the verse in Sunday School, “I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you." (Matthew 17:20) 

In an angry, questioning, depressed college student, she saw and cultivated a mustard seed of faith.

Recently I had lunch with her and the topic of calling and vocation came up. She said to me of her work with college students, of the shattering and rebuilding of worldviews, of developing a faith of our own, “I could do that cycle over and over again, forever.”

It wasn’t just me that she impacted. Her faith in me transformed my life and, in turn, spilled over into my relationships, my career, my spheres of influence. And it’s not just me that she’s mentored. I can’t even begin to count the number of students who would call her a most trusted friend and mentor.

She has a calling, a vocation, to work with college students.

When I think of Frederick Buechner’s wise words, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet,” I think of my mentor.  (Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC)

I think of the deep gladness she finds in friendship with college students. I think of the deep hunger for understanding and connection I felt when I returned from Central America, broken and despondent. I think of the mustard seed that blossomed into a flourishing tree in my life and in the lives of so many other students.

That is what I want to find. A calling that brings me deep gladness and meets the world’s deepest hungers. I have ideas of what this looks like. I experienced it for a time at Plant With Purpose, finding deep gladness in writing for an organization that meets deep hunger in developing countries.

As I move forward, I will continue to keep my eyes peeled and my spirit open to the mustard seeds of hope, of joy and faith that God is calling me to cultivate in the world around me.