Enduring Ministry Reflection, Celebrating the Release
This reflection is based on Samuel Rahberg’s remarks at the 17 Jan 2017 book release of Enduring Ministry: Toward a Lifetime of Christian Leadership(Liturgical Press),hosted by the Sisters of St. Benedict of St. Paul’s Monastery.We are formed, shaped and encouraged for ministry by those around us. I marvel at the work God is accomplishing through your lives and the even wider circle of people who help you stay at that task. I hope, in some small way, to be one of those who support you in the work to which you have been called.
On the Boat (Mark 6:30-34)
This past week I found myself right at home in Mark 6. The disciples are sent out two by two, preaching, casting out demons, and anointing the sick. After a time they return to Jesus and tell “him all that they had done and taught” (6:30, NRSV) Jesus replies, "Come away by yourselves to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while" (31). Sometimes that's exactly what we want to hear, the expectation we have as we climb into the boat with Jesus. Listen for what really happens: “Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them” (33). The disciples did not get the deserted place they wanted. What the disciples do get is a boat ride with Jesus between crowds. This book and this evening is about the boat ride. What happens, what needs to happen when we're sent out, when we're serving, and when we're on the boat journeying with Chris on the way to the next crowd so that we get off the boat and continue serving like Jesus? “As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things” (34). Whatever happened on that boat, Jesus sets foot ashore and demonstrates an enduring ministry.
Vision
One of the things that needs to happen on the boat is reconnecting with vision. When I hear women and men talk about burnout, it tends to be less about being overworked and underpaid, than having lost touch with the vision God has instilled in them. So here's something for you to reflect upon over coming days:
What are you passionate about?
What revives courage and hope in you?
What are the images that make all the fluff and frustration melt away, leaving you with Christ-like compassion, ready to serve those on the next shore?
Think about what happens when a little child plays in the center of the room or when the spark of divine creativity makes us lose the sense of time. We’re taken out of ourselves for a moment. It's captivating and enlivening. For me, as I share in the early chapters, the sight of a huge, steady eagle does that. In those moments, all the hogwash from the last shore falls into its proper place, no longer consuming our hearts and minds, but taking its proper place as a small part of a much larger and holy mystery. That, to me, is what vision is about and it's the real antidote to weariness in life and ministry. We keep coming home to this boat, to slow down, to see more clearly the world awash with God's grace, and to set out for shore again. From the Preface . . .
It is my hope that writing this book means fewer women and men leave ministry in anger or defeat and that more Christian leaders will find an inner spaciousness that allows for better discernment. That requires holding a creative tension between the real challenges of ministry and the spiritual life that undergirds it. It means making the daily commitment to participate in the mission of God without surrendering hope and faithfulness to the all-too-common anxieties and frustrations of life in community. In that respect, every word that follows applies to all the baptized. Whatever your unique calling, whether in a secular or religious context, you share the call to discipleship that leads to service (xvi).
When I hear myself and others telling the challenging stories of service, I can usually recognize three themes: grounded in the moment, perched in conversation, soaring in ambiguity. Although your experience of each may change and be repeated, it's likely one resonates more strongly for you than the others in any given time.Before offering a brief explanation of each one, I want to say one thing from the start—wherever you are, you are not alone. The real danger in any of these seasons is becoming isolated and then losing faith in the calling that God has given you alone to live. This book represents what I am continuing to learn alongside others about tending that important sense of calling.
Grounded in the Moment
Let's start with the most concrete season, grounded in the moment. These are the times when we are learning to practice awareness, poise, and intentionality.I remember one Monday morning when my colleague Chris came storming up to me as I passed through the front door of the Monastery. She set in about concerns we have both long since forgotten, but I remember asking if she had stewed on things all weekend long. “Yes!,” she said, “and I even lost sleep over it!” We agreed that there were better and more timely ways to talk through issues that do not merit the extended attention of our inner worlds. “For pitty sakes,” I said, “call me on Friday!” We still laugh about that and remind each other to talk before stewing.We've all had sleepless nights, frustrating conversations that just keep spinning out in our minds. Or we find ourselves in situations where people say that thing that presses our button just right. On the boat with Christ and our closest companions, we need to take a deep breath and find a better margin between stimulus and the response. That happens when we can start recognizing and reflecting upon the larger patterns in the small stuff and when we pay attention to what God is doing in us and through us even while we're uncomfortable.This kind of reflection can lead to tough questions that we don't want to face. We might try to dismiss or delay them, but if you've been around the block once or twice, you know those kinds of questions do not go away. We stumble into them one way or another and we tend to respond to them in one of four ways (these I have adapted from James Hollis, who was describing what finally brings people to seek help from a therapist): first, we pretend we do not know; second, we employ more of what we want to know; third, we refuse what we know; fourth, we finally come to know more truly. From Chapter 2:
The stumbling begins with the elemental tactics of denial and avoidance, as we tuck the internal questions away for “later” and hope they will disappear on their own. There is no use fighting battles over small things, we tell ourselves. That is to pretend we do not know. Then, like Sisyphus doomed to roll his boulder up the hill only to watch it roll down, we dig in and work harder. We say “yes” too often and throw everything we have into asserting our will against things that do not go our way, believing our every desire could be met if only we had a little more time and energy. That is to employ more of what we want to know. The third defense is to move away from the questions that make us most uncomfortable. Something deep inside us is close to the breaking point but not so far gone that we cannot make one last ditch attempt at escape. We flee, expecting the questions to remain neatly confined in the world we have left behind. That is to refuse what we know. When at long last we become too tired to outwit or outrun the questions by ourselves, then our defenses fall. That is the moment we surrender and ask for help. Now begins the risky adventure to know more truly, a journey that sets out from the questions we cannot help but welcome (24).
We will take up our deepest questions one way or another. The good news is that there is real help in the boat. If you wanted to keep thinking about this, you might ask yourself, “Where are everyday pressures blinding me to the help that I most need?” My hope is that chapters 1-4 help readers recognize God's presence on the shores and offer some tools for reflecting on the boat.
Perched in Conversation
The second season is perched in conversation, while we’re cultivating conviction, mutuality, and readiness.Artists have something to teach us about mutually formative gifts. I have had the good pleasure of working with two artists recently, each of whom are helping me come to new a new awareness. My youngest sisters Natalie is an artist who proposed that we combine her art and my words to create the now completed The Gospel of John in Poem and Image (Aetos Publications, 2016). It has been amazing for me to see how she responds visually to my work and how I am fed by hers. Similarly, I have been co-hosting some forums on music and the spiritual life with my talented musician friend Nathan. He and I had met on many occasions for great conversations about the topic, and what I learned was that my gifts were best used in drawing a connection between those themes and structuring the presentation. My gifts set the stage for Nathan to share his marvelous gifts.That same process of discovery is important for every one of us. How am I wired and how I am called to help others blossom? That mutuality changes us and our communities for the better. Consider, for example, the question a man once asked me during a presentation: “What does it do to you to work with the Sisters?” Serving day to day with these women I have learned much about stability, community and certainly the need for ongoing conversion!Here is something for you to ponder. I think that sometimes we can grow accustomed to resisting ideas or people in our communities; we can grow used to fighting against things that don't go our way. While there is a place for vigorous and purposeful disagreement, I also believe we need to pay attention to how these very same difficult relationships are actually making us. These people may also be in the boat. As we journey between shores together, we can wonder: How is God using the circumstances of real life to make and mold us?
Soaring in the Midst of Ambiguity
There is one more season with which you may have resonated: soaring in the midst of ambiguity, when we practice honesty, courage, and hope.When you live with a medical professional as I do, the dinner conversation usually drifts toward the kinds of things most families politely avoid: “Mom, what was the grossest thing you saw today?,” or, “Mom, did you really take a cadaver anatomy class? Mom, why does the body do this and why can't the body do that?” And usually we get far more about Mom's day at the clinic than we get out of the kids' about their day at school. Living with a medical professional also means that our house is full of books with titles like Being Mortal and Dying Wise and that Beth and I talk a great deal about end of life issues and what they mean for us, for our family, and those we serve. In short, we cannot take a single boat ride for granted.Maybe such things are not so inappropriate for the dinner table, after all. Benedict himself writes in RB 4, "Keep death daily before your eyes." Our mortality and our human limitations are simply the air we breathe. If we cannot escape them, how do we turn toward them and learn from them the kind of real honesty and humility that grounds a hope strong enough to endure ambiguity?I'm convinced that what is needed for a healthy spiritual life and an effective ministry is not more physical strength and agility, but the willingness to accept our vulnerability and the courage to consider what it might mean in this season of our lives for Christ to be made strong in our weakness. So many people I encounter, inside and outside of this monastery, are waiting in the long moments between clarities: They ask, “What are we to make of this world?,” “Is God calling me to stay here or go to a new place?,” “When I ask, ‘What next, Lord?’, why are you so quiet?"These especially are the people I have in mind as I am writing. All those blessed souls who find themselves in-between. And I'm coming to believe that this means nearly all of us, nearly all of the time. In the late chapters, I encourage us to take up waiting as a spiritual discipline, especially since we're going to be doing it anyway:
Now, preparing to wait upon new possibilities and to ask what God might have in store for the future, we need to recall that part of ourselves that has the softer capacities. It is the part that shelters lightness and freedom, and that peeks out on those occasions when we remember our love for the ministry to which we have been called and our love for the people we encounter this day (118-119).
So if you find yourself waiting and wondering, and odds are that this includes many of us in this room, be gentle with yourself. Befriend the fact that you have limitations just as surely as you have gifts. Listen for the soft stirrings of the Holy Spirit and carve out the time to climb aboard with Christ, where you can hear those stirrings just a little more easily. The alternative, if you wish, is to come the Rahbergs' house and to try eating while the kids ask Beth about bodily functions. That'll keep any of us humble.
Closing
I'd like to leave you with one more quote, emphasizing the grace of God at work in you and the call you have to share that grace with others however you find yourself serving the world. From Ch. 6:
We exercise whatever degree of influence we enjoy because someone had faith enough to help us see who we are in God’s sight and what good might be accomplished in a community through us. Galatians 2:20 reads, “Yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me.” The paradigm of power in Christian community roots the electrifying life of possibility in the mysterious indwelling of Christ. This power is not ours to hoard or abuse; it is an abundant gift for generations to share (77).
On the shore or in the boat, seeking to be grounded in the moment, perched in conversation, or soaring in ambiguity, “may you live faithfully and well, toward a ministry that endures."
Cover photo of Enduring Ministry: Toward a Lifetime of Christian Leadership: by spiritual director Samuel (Sam) Rahberg