It is 5:30am as I start to write this post. I am uncertain the words that I should use to express the thoughts and emotions that are flooding through me. Today three people who have become dear friends of mine, who mean so much to me, will load up into a van and drive away to go to Spec and then to fly away back to their homes.
As my sisters and brother depart from Nauvoo today, I am reminded of a time long ago, or rather a story that my parents tell me. When I was a small child I lived in this same area, and my grandparents lived in the house in which my brother from Fiji and I have lived in for the past couple of months. I can remember the big moving van outside on the road as my grandparents loaded up to move back to Oregon. My parents recall that as they loaded up the truck, somewhere along the way I packed myself into it and refused to come out for I wanted to go with my grandpa. In fact I was so good at packing myself in that they had to unload part of the truck to get to me. So as my sisters and brother pack, I want to do the same again, but the question is at the airport how do I divide myself into three as each will go a different way, one to Germany, one to Fiji, and one to Australia? I am sad at no longer being able to be near them, to be able to do things with them, and yet at the same time I am rejoicing for them for I know it has been five months since they have seen their homes and the family and friends that are missing them and they are missing. It is my hope that we will in the years to come see one another again. Perhaps at world conferences, perhaps I will have the opportunity to visit their homelands and see them there. I wish them great peace and safety on their journeys home, and as they travel with me yet in distant lands on the path of discipleship. May their smiles and the joy in their hearts touch the lives of many others as it has touched my own in these months that I have known them. If only everyone had such great joy and love and gave it so freely, we might truly have the peaceable kingdom, aye even Zion, truly realized and all of creation restored back into the unique harmony it is created to be.
This perhaps brings me to reflect upon my own call, my own role, or perhaps rather to finally have the courage to write about it and thus start to engage it more. For the past few months a phrase has been running through my head that I feel expresses my current place in life. I have in fact attempted several times to write and reflect upon it, and yet have never finished a post, or any other writing regarding it. That phrase is “Standing in the open, and yet running scared.” At times this is expressed in slightly different terms, but in essence: I feel as if I know part of what the Eternal One is calling me to be. I feel as if I am at least at some level responding to that calling, and yet at the same time I am running scared, perhaps more scared than Jonah, as I feel unworthy. I feel incapable, untalented. I am afraid of failing. At times I see myself embracing that call to share the Peace of Christ and inviting all to know that peace, to share, embrace, and grow from the Love of the Eternal One and the hope and comfort of the Spirit, and form and transform community by that love, peace, and hope. Yet, at the same time I see myself being hesitant, I see myself going “Hey God, are you sure you have the right person? Are you sure you want me to do this? Are you sure I can do this?” I feel in some ways that I am hiding in the open. I am embracing the call that I have been assured of to seek further education regarding ministry to aide me in that which is to come. I have stepped out of my comfort zone and formed an field education placement with the new Community of Christ Spiritual Formation Center at the Kirtland Temple, with the Temple, and the Eastern Great Lakes Mission Centre, that will stretch and prod me, and yet I feel at the same time I am running scared from that call to share the peace of Christ and invite all to know that peace and community formed in the name of the One who came and taught peace. I keep finding myself saying “Are you sure God?” and “I don’t know if I have the ability to do that… Can I just focus on these other things that I am comfortable with please? Pretty Please…” But I know it is time, for me to start more fully embracing my call to share the great joy, hope, love, and peace that I have encountered through, with, and in community formed in the name of the One who came and taught Peace.
In closing I guess, my final thoughts are, I will miss my friends, but I would rather miss them than to never have had known them and had so many wonderful experiences with them. I will stay in touch with them, and am inspired by their love and joy to step forward and encounter my self doubts and fears and embrace more fully my call to share the Peace of Christ.
(Oh, if you don’t hear from me for some time it means that I figured out a way to go to Australia, Fiji, and Germany all at the same time and so packed myself in the middle of the van once again…)
Peace be with one and all,
— Lyle II