Who’s Calling?

        Wednesday I was in full assembly-line gear.  My Christmas shopping list tacked to my brain, I set out first to buy a wreath for us and for our daughter at City People’s Garden Store.  It would be a short drive from there through the Arboretum to the University District and the bookstore where I would find gifts for our great niece and my nephew, then order the gifts wrapped and shipped.  Viola! I would have completed gift shopping two weeks before the 25^th.  Leisure would follow to bake Christmas cookies and bread, to bathe in the nostalgic warmth of a season I love in ever-darkening days.

            There I stood surrounded by sparsely decorated wreathes ranging from eight to sixteen inches.  Settling on two, I moved on to select premade bows or choose among a colorful assortment of red and gold ribbons for a customized job.  My cell phone rang.

            “Hi Mary.  This is Vicki from church.”  Her voice tingled with apologetic enthusiasm that presages an Ask.

            “ I know this is short notice, but would you write a poem for the church Christmas card and email it to us by Friday?  And, if possible, link it to the upcoming sermon series on Light.”

            “Oh Vicki,” I laughed into my phone.  “I love you!”  (Translated: OMG, one more thing to do under pressure. )  Last month the request was for a poem to read at our pastor’s retirement celebration.  I truly am honored to be sought out.  I can’t recall when I first heard myself dubbed the church’s “Poet Laureate.”  Nonetheless, any artist knows that art-on-demand is tough.  Vicki, a soloist, commiserated, sharing her anxiety when asked with short notice to sing a solo at a memorial service. With the same close deadline, Rebecca Rickabaugh agreed to paint a picture for the cover of the card.  All of which got me to thinking of how Vicki’s call disrupted my efficient plans for my day.

            The poet in me tosses around literal and figurative speech.  I had literally responded to a call. As for churches, we often hear pastors explaining their job as a response to a call.  Even as a child, I wondered if one day that pastor, as a young adult, headed off to be a firefighter or college professor but heard an imaginary phone ring.  My young imagination heard a deep voice:

            “Hello.  God here…”.

            I understand that the call, is more a felt mission, rather like Jesus summoning the fishermen, who were immersed in gathering food for their families, to drop their nets and follow Him.

            Here we are in Advent.  The Annunciation has occurred when Mary, probably immersed in preparations for her upcoming wedding to Joseph was sidelined by an angel telling her she was pregnant with the son of God.  Not the call she expected.  But she answered.

            Seems reasonable in the Biblical context, yet these interruptions to change direction in our everyday lives don’t always feel inspired.  We are nabbed when busiest doing something else. Then if we submit to the distraction, we scold ourselves at bedtime for not accomplishing the things we penciled on the “to do” list earlier in our day. 

            Back to the Bible.  How often do the prophets advise being still so as to hear the word of God?  Modern day gurus advocate for meditation so we can open to the Word.  I failed at meditation, never getting to the state of nothingness that would erase trying to remember what I needed at the grocery store after the meditation sessions.

            Let’s hope interrupting calls come from a place of goodness.  We have seen enough violence in our country from folks who think they were called to perform acts of destruction.  I prefer to keep the call connotion as a beckoning to something good, something creative, something to build community.

            As for the church’s call to write a Christmas card poem, I agreed, hoping short and meaningful lines would drop into mind.  By the end of Wednesday, I had scribbled a few images of candles and flames and holes in the darkness.  Rebecca sent her completed image. Wow!  it was beautiful and fit well with what I hoped to say poetically.  One of the rules I am breaking again is to send out a poem that has not rested in a drawer for at least six weeks.  But here I am Friday afternoon pushing send on my computer, the poem skimming through cyberspace to the church office.  No time to revise it.  My husband is calling: “When’s dinner ready?”

Fiat Lux

On the day of Christ’s birth,

light a candle.

Let it burn a hole in the darkest night.

His birth warms us through winter.

His birth is our Vision and Light.

Feel the flame in His name.