So many people ask me — ‘What will you do out west Anne? Will you work as a priest? Are you transferring your license to work in a parish? Will you continue to write? What is your dream for your life?’.  

This week embedded in one of Barbara Brown Taylor’s sermons I found a descriptive phrase for my life – my current one, and the one to come.

‘Our job is to wait without losing hope.’

We’re nearly at the equinox when the days are long, and then we begin the cycle into the long dark days of winter. So many of us find the world in dark place right now. World leaders trouble us, slavery continues, refugees suffer and daily we see violence in the news. Even without nature and the world’s happenings, we all know situational darkness that envelopes our lives when the phone rings, or doesn’t ring, when someone no longer comes home, when the pay cheques stop, when the dreams fall apart…..Or the silence when the God we knew seems to disappear and we can’t find the sparkle of faith we once knew.

Taylor was writing about the darkness, so I’m comfortable tweaking my job description:

My job is to wait in the dark without losing hope.

I don’t know what my days will look like when I wake up one morning in my same bed, but in BC. But I do know the flow of my days here and I imagine they will continue no matter what lies ahead for me.

My rhythm involves taking time in the morning for devotional reading and meditation. I read from a variety of sources – scripture, poetry, theology, prayer, spiritual masters. I have many teachers who I allow into my world for soul formation. I contemplate and meditate which allow me to rest in the presence of God. Even in the silence of God, I know myself as a branch entwined with the Divine Vine. Then my day unfolds as prayer. What mischief will we get up to today? To whom am I to smile? To whom will forgiveness be given? To whom will I be vulnerable?  My prayers are no longer tucked into a few devotional hours in the morning, but flow through me throughout the day. And they flow, whether the light is sparkling in me like it did during my Sabbath Leave and the year that followed, or whether the darkness surrounds me as it can in this time of the relentless work of a move and significant uncertainty. No matter what…

My job is to wait without losing hope.

Each moment of each day is prayer, unceasing prayer, all grounded in the God I know and yet don’t know, the One I open to and rest in each morning in my study time and meditation, and the one I play with as I sort through each drawer in our home.

My job is to wait without losing hope.

How about you Gentle Reader … Where are you called to wait and hope? What’s your job description?

If this is interesting to you, please show support by sharing it with a friend. Let’s broaden the contemplative pathway.

Love and prayers

Anne+

Mystic in Motion

Contemplative Fire, Community Leader Canada