Vocation

Vocation at its deepest level is not, "Oh, boy, do I want to go to this strange place where I have to learn a new way to live and where no one, including me, understands what I'm doing." Vocation at its deepest level is, "This is something I can't not do, for reasons I'm unable to explain to anyone else and don't fully understand myself but that are nonetheless compelling."--Parker Palmer in Let Your Life Speak

The angel sits on the window sill. S/He is neither inside nor outside. S/He gives me to understand that this is the correct place for an angel -- on the threshold. Perfectly relaxed, yet burning like the Olympic torch, s/he gazes at me expectantly.

I am kneeling. My heart demands it. Weary knees and sleepy head and all, when I am kneeling my heart is open and clear. It speaks now. "I have planted what you have given me."

My brain is amazed by this statement. I never was entirely sure what the mission given me WAS, let alone if I had completed it.

"Well done," says the angel, dipping his/her fiery head.

I am not too surprised by this; I am often outside the loop a little when it comes to head understanding. In overheard conversations between friends, for instance, I might find myself delighted by the exchange created by a joke even though I don't "get" the joke, might not even have heard it. Following the flow of the relationship, delighting in the good humor, heart to heart, I am jolted when someone else equally on the periphery asks, "what did he say," and I suddenly realize I haven't a clue. I'm finding meaning in their affection for one another. Intuitive types are like that.

So I am prepared to simply bask in the angel's praise and let it go at that. I'll find out what I need to know later, if at all. I'll trust that some part of me -- my heart -- gets what it needs to get.

But s/he looks directly into my eyes and says, "It is important that you understand."

Busted. "But I don't," I admit. "I have not understood from the beginning."

The angel shows me an exchange I often have with the world. Someone -- a friend, a client, the writer of the book I'm currently reading -- gives me something. They hand me bits -- ideas, dreams, revelations, images. And I work with these bits. I find their roots, their imaginal significance, their natural connections with the larger world, their meaning, their worth, and the beginnings of how they might be developed. In other words, I plant them.

I do this all the time. I do this in all areas of my life. I see the way sunlight reflects on new green leaves; I plant that in a poem or a painting. I receive a bit of some one's life, I plant it in love, meaning and understanding. I hear a good story or bit of scripture, I plant it in an image or a sermon. For all these months I thought the angel was giving me a special Lenten task when s/he told me to plant what s/he gave me. Instead s/he was handing me on a silver platter an image of who I am.

Whatever you give me, I will plant. Of course. I am like that. That is what I do. That is what I have always done.

The angel settles back on the window ledge. "I think I'll just stay here for a few days and see what emerges," s/he says.

I nod absently, preoccupied for my search for a ceramic pot and a watering can.