Vocation
21/03/15 05:22
I have been a Christian all of my life - longer than that, actually. My parents were Christian. My mother is descended from a long line of Methodists that includes a number of preachers in the extended family tree. Perhaps the most famous of the Methodist relatives on her side of the family was Dr. Franklin Little, who was a scholar and leader of improved relations between Christians and Jews in the wake of the Holocaust. He is the author of “The Crucifixion of the Jews.” Mother’s parents and grandparents were very active in the church. Her father attended national Methodist gatherings and her grandfather was recorder for Brother Van.
My father grew up Presbyterian, and that followed family wanderings that included roots in Pennsylvania Amish and other Protestant groups.
I was baptized as an infant and have never thought of myself as anything but Christian. I am at home in my faith. I don’t ever remember wanting to be a person of any different faith. I am not tempted by or even very interested in atheism.
I am, however, interested in the faith of others. I have studied the practices of other religions, I have read the sacred writings of Judaism, Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism and other world religions. I have invested many hours in listening to sacred stories and learning about parts of Indigenous American spiritual practices and traditions.
In the country where I grew up, before the time of settlers, young men sought their vocation by going on a walk. Crow men prepared by participating in sweat lodges and listening to the prayers of elders. They then took off on a walk, usually into the mountains. They walked and walked, eating little or no food and drinking very little. They stopped along the way as needed and then walked some more. They waited until an animal brought them a message about their vocation in life. Many sought the high country and received their vision from birds. Eagles and hawks are prevalent in the area. Some saw elk or deer or bears. I’ve hiked up to the caves in Lionhead Mountain and I have seen the pictographs there that record it as a sacred place for many generations of people.
I didn’t walk, but the place where I first began to be aware of my vocation is in that same valley, 20 or more miles farther up the valley from Lionhead. That special place is a church camp called Miminagish, which is the Crow name for the river, “singing waters.” I went to that camp every summer of the first 25 years of my life, including being taken there by my parents when I was only a couple of months old. It was there that I got to know ministers that I admired and sought to emulate. It was there that I first began to think of the ministry as a possible vocation for me.
In our traditions it is other people, more than the animals, who help one discern one’s vocation. Before I was ordained, I needed to become equipped for ministry by graduating from college and completing a Master’s Degree. In my case I also completed a Doctorate. Then, with my seminary education completed, I worked with a Committee on the Ministry and prepared my ordination paper. I was examined by an ecclesiastical council of lay and clergy church leaders to determine my fitness for ministry. My paper, which I had to be prepared to defend, contained the story of my journey and my experience of being called to the ministry. For us vocation is not self-chosen, but the result of a careful process of discernment undertaken with the members of the church.
People of European Christian backgrounds don’t have the same relationship with other animals as Native Americans. We are not as likely to refer to them as siblings or to attribute to them powers of speech or discernment. So I don’t know how to answer when I am occasionally asked who my ‘spirit animal’ is. I’m not sure that I have a spirit animal. My faith and my religious practices are not exactly Native religion.
When I am in other moods, however, I have said that my spirit animal might be either a bullfrog or a beaver. The bullfrog comes from a single incident when after paddling at night, I turned my kayak over in the grass and went to bed. The next morning was chilly, so I turned over the boat, placed it in the water, crawled in and sealed up my spray skirt - all without ever really looking into the boat. The bullfrog who had sought shelter in the boat overnight was probably groggy with the cold and waited until I had paddled well out into the lake before he made his presence known. I nearly rolled the boat as I pulled my feet back from the creature, imagining that I might have a snake on board. We achieved a truce, him staying in the bow of the boat and me paddling with my knees tucked up between the coaming with the spray skirt off, until we reached shore. Shortly afterward, we both abandoned the boat. I inspected it with a flashlight in hand before taking it on the next paddle.
Beavers, however, have had a more constant presence in my life. When I was a child at Mimanagish, I used to love to hike the mile and a half or so up to the beaver ponds. I said I was looking for moose, and perhaps I was, but I rarely got a glimpse of the big creatures. Mostly I watched the bevers at work swimming with branches in their mouths, occasionally chewing on trees on the shore. I was less bothered by mosquitoes than my fishermen brothers and would sit still and watch more than they. I got to know individual beavers by appearance and even learned a bit of their individual traits.
As an adult, I have often paddled close enough to beavers to get the warning slap of the tail. The first time it happened to me when I was paddling a canoe I was startled at first. These days, I usually see the beaver before the tail comes out of the water. I’ve learned to paddle close, but keep my distance, so I can watch the beaver for a while. I know several of the beavers at the lake and in the inlet by appearance and the way they swim. Each year I go paddling to get a glimpse at the kits, and to see which lodges are growing and which have been abandoned.
Recently I read that among the tribes of the Pacific northwest, the appearance of a beaver in a vision quest indicated that the young man seeking a vision would become a canoe builder.
I’m quite comfortable with my vocation as a minister, but perhaps my friend the beaver has influenced my choice of avocation. Building canoes has proven to be a good hobby for me.
My father grew up Presbyterian, and that followed family wanderings that included roots in Pennsylvania Amish and other Protestant groups.
I was baptized as an infant and have never thought of myself as anything but Christian. I am at home in my faith. I don’t ever remember wanting to be a person of any different faith. I am not tempted by or even very interested in atheism.
I am, however, interested in the faith of others. I have studied the practices of other religions, I have read the sacred writings of Judaism, Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism and other world religions. I have invested many hours in listening to sacred stories and learning about parts of Indigenous American spiritual practices and traditions.
In the country where I grew up, before the time of settlers, young men sought their vocation by going on a walk. Crow men prepared by participating in sweat lodges and listening to the prayers of elders. They then took off on a walk, usually into the mountains. They walked and walked, eating little or no food and drinking very little. They stopped along the way as needed and then walked some more. They waited until an animal brought them a message about their vocation in life. Many sought the high country and received their vision from birds. Eagles and hawks are prevalent in the area. Some saw elk or deer or bears. I’ve hiked up to the caves in Lionhead Mountain and I have seen the pictographs there that record it as a sacred place for many generations of people.
I didn’t walk, but the place where I first began to be aware of my vocation is in that same valley, 20 or more miles farther up the valley from Lionhead. That special place is a church camp called Miminagish, which is the Crow name for the river, “singing waters.” I went to that camp every summer of the first 25 years of my life, including being taken there by my parents when I was only a couple of months old. It was there that I got to know ministers that I admired and sought to emulate. It was there that I first began to think of the ministry as a possible vocation for me.
In our traditions it is other people, more than the animals, who help one discern one’s vocation. Before I was ordained, I needed to become equipped for ministry by graduating from college and completing a Master’s Degree. In my case I also completed a Doctorate. Then, with my seminary education completed, I worked with a Committee on the Ministry and prepared my ordination paper. I was examined by an ecclesiastical council of lay and clergy church leaders to determine my fitness for ministry. My paper, which I had to be prepared to defend, contained the story of my journey and my experience of being called to the ministry. For us vocation is not self-chosen, but the result of a careful process of discernment undertaken with the members of the church.
People of European Christian backgrounds don’t have the same relationship with other animals as Native Americans. We are not as likely to refer to them as siblings or to attribute to them powers of speech or discernment. So I don’t know how to answer when I am occasionally asked who my ‘spirit animal’ is. I’m not sure that I have a spirit animal. My faith and my religious practices are not exactly Native religion.
When I am in other moods, however, I have said that my spirit animal might be either a bullfrog or a beaver. The bullfrog comes from a single incident when after paddling at night, I turned my kayak over in the grass and went to bed. The next morning was chilly, so I turned over the boat, placed it in the water, crawled in and sealed up my spray skirt - all without ever really looking into the boat. The bullfrog who had sought shelter in the boat overnight was probably groggy with the cold and waited until I had paddled well out into the lake before he made his presence known. I nearly rolled the boat as I pulled my feet back from the creature, imagining that I might have a snake on board. We achieved a truce, him staying in the bow of the boat and me paddling with my knees tucked up between the coaming with the spray skirt off, until we reached shore. Shortly afterward, we both abandoned the boat. I inspected it with a flashlight in hand before taking it on the next paddle.
Beavers, however, have had a more constant presence in my life. When I was a child at Mimanagish, I used to love to hike the mile and a half or so up to the beaver ponds. I said I was looking for moose, and perhaps I was, but I rarely got a glimpse of the big creatures. Mostly I watched the bevers at work swimming with branches in their mouths, occasionally chewing on trees on the shore. I was less bothered by mosquitoes than my fishermen brothers and would sit still and watch more than they. I got to know individual beavers by appearance and even learned a bit of their individual traits.
As an adult, I have often paddled close enough to beavers to get the warning slap of the tail. The first time it happened to me when I was paddling a canoe I was startled at first. These days, I usually see the beaver before the tail comes out of the water. I’ve learned to paddle close, but keep my distance, so I can watch the beaver for a while. I know several of the beavers at the lake and in the inlet by appearance and the way they swim. Each year I go paddling to get a glimpse at the kits, and to see which lodges are growing and which have been abandoned.
Recently I read that among the tribes of the Pacific northwest, the appearance of a beaver in a vision quest indicated that the young man seeking a vision would become a canoe builder.
I’m quite comfortable with my vocation as a minister, but perhaps my friend the beaver has influenced my choice of avocation. Building canoes has proven to be a good hobby for me.