For the second morning in a row, this morning, when the clock struck 4:00, I was instantly awake and alert. The verse that has come to mind is from 1 Samuel 3: “Speak, for your servant is listening.”
I think it’s part of the discernment process in our search process for a new staff member. We’ve interviewed four of the five people we’ve invited to meet with us. And I’ve spent a number of hours with each candidate informally, getting an idea of how easily we can talk together and understand how each other thinks. I surely don’t want a relationship that would be hard work, and I have found that communication either happens easily or it doesn’t.
What’s making the process wonderfully difficult is that we’ve been blessed with more than one person who would bring great energy and vitality to our congregation. I find that reasoning only carries me so far, in making a decision like this. Listening to the wise folks serving on the committee with me is essential. We have become a discernment group. The 4:00 AM listening is essential, too. I don’t think this is just me, churning in my own thoughts (which is sometimes the case). I think it is a call to prayer: “a God thing,” as my spiritual director likes to say. It’s a listening for God. Who is God calling to be our Ministry Associate?
A week from now, at 4:00 AM, I will already have been up for an hour. I’ll spend next week at Mepkin Abbey, a Trappist monastery in South Carolina. Wake up is at 3:00. Vigils (the first of the seven daily prayer offices) begins at 3:20. The day ends following Compline, at 8:00 PM. Then it’s time for sleep.
I’m such a morning person! After a week of that monastic schedule, my mind and body are really charged up!
Unfortunately, back here in the real world, there are folks who expect me to be awake and attentive later than 8:00 in the evening. And there’s another major impediment to my becoming a monk. It’s that darn rule of celibacy.
