KEEPING VIGIL

“I will keep vigil with you.” It was my new spiritual director speaking. He had listened to me ramble on and on about what was not happening in my spiritual and vocational life. I’d been talking for most of an hour and I was even boring myself. There was a silence. I didn’t have anything more to say; I had touched on everything I could think of that I should say to him. It was quiet for awhile. Then he took a breath and shifted in his seat, rearranging his imposing monk’s robes around him. “I will keep vigil with you.”

I was at a loss. “Protestants don’t have vigils”, I stuttered. “I’m not really sure what that means.” He asked if I had ever experienced the Vigil of Easter or the Vigil of Advent. Well, yes, I had been at Easter Vigil. He explained that monks get up in the night to wait, fully expecting to be surprised by what God has been doing in the dark. It is not just waiting, he said, it is keeping watch for something wonderful that you know is coming. I had to sit for a few minutes to absorb the difference between waiting and keeping vigil. It seems that keeping vigil is a way of being engaged in what’s already on its way, even though you can’t see it yet. There is a quality of certainty in the expectation that appeals to me because it is so much more active than the passive “waiting” that has been so frustrating and depressing during this time. I love the thought that he will be watching, praying, expecting with me, preparing for whatever my own great surprise will be.

I’ve been thinking about vigils, about my own experience of prayerful waiting. Perhaps this is not such a new experience after all. I remember sitting by my beloved Aunt Anita’s bedside in the hours before she died. I thought I would read or knit while I sat in the room with her. But I could do neither. Somehow being in that time with her took all my concentration, all my awareness. Something awesome was happening to her as she lay so still. I could almost see and feel it. I was somehow part of it, and privileged to be there. I remember the time at the end of my pregnancies, the big countdown to the day when I would undergo the transformation of labor and meet my child. Somehow I already knew that child, I could put my hand on its head as it moved across my belly from hip to hip. I knew when it was awake and when it was asleep. But she was still a complete mystery as a human being. She and I were keeping vigil together, awaiting the surprise of meeting each other.

So vigil-keeping is not as unfamiliar as I first thought. We Protestants have been there, too. We know that God is always faithful to the promises that sustain us. We know that God’s steadfast love always leads us forward into the next surprise if we can keep awake through the quiet of the night. “Stay with me, remain here with me, watch and pray”, are the English words of a Taize hymn that repeats and repeats in the dark as worshippers approach the cross in the candlelight. Keeping vigil is lonely sometimes, but it’s not such a bad place to be.

Restless mind, restless heart. It's hard to concentrate this morning, hard to clear my mind for devotion and meditation. There is a congregation in Oregon which has "nominated" me for an interview. It is a congregation previously served by my brother, which asks for me because he was such a wonderful pastor for them and they have not been as well served by the two pastors since he left for another call nearly ten years ago. There is a change in the Bishop's office in the Oregon Synod - new Bishop, new assistant. The assistant and the Bishop that I know are now gone and the new Bishop wants the new assistant to begin the process of contacts and interviews for this congregation. Sigh. Once again, I got my hopes up, telling my heart that this was a slam-dunk and that, surely, this was God's design for both me and the congregation. So having to be patient to hear feels like a setback. As much as I try not to get too invested in any new possibilities, my heart just won't behave.

Meanwhile, I have been participating in the Inter-Lutheran Disaster Response Emergency Team (I-LERT), a cooperative effort of Lutheran Social Services of the Southwest and Lutheran Disaster Response. So far, my participation as a volunteer has not involved anything but going to organizational meetings to introduce those concerned in the ELCA Southern California Synods to their Lutheran Church- Missouri Synod counterparts and draw up plans for Inter-Lutheran cooperation and training for disasters. Well, the fires which have devastated Southern California have called up all the resources and mobilized those which were in place to work with counties and the State of California to help with distribution of services. I got a call this morning from the Southern California I-LERT coordinator asking if I would work on a task force to coordinate spiritual care for people and pastors affected by this series of disasters. Of course, I said yes.
I wait to hear from the woman pastor who will lead this team, and I am ready and eager to go and serve in the midst of the destruction.

This morning was the first in a few days in which there was time to sit over morning prayer and collect myself for a day that would allow some reading and study instead of the running to answer other people's schedules. But I find that my mind will not open to quiet, that my disappointment and my eagerness to be engaged in disaster ministry has put me into overdrive. I am imagining what I would do if I don't have a call by the summer, thinking about what regular travel into the San Diego area would require of the meager schedule I now have in place. My need for order has overtaken my willingness to keep vigil. Aaaaaargh. Time to practice yoga breathing? Perhaps.

How I Spent My (Spiritual) Vacation

It all came together so suddenly. I had been thinking of taking a week to visit St Andrew’s Abbey, my favorite spiritual hangout, but wanted to look into a workshop rather than just going to for a week of silence and wandering. As this thinking was developing in the back of my mind, I called an LA friend for a long-overdue lunch date. Her phone numbers were no longer in service! When I reached her by e-mail and discovered that she and her husband had moved to Arizona, she invited me to come to St. Andrews to participate in a workshop she was presenting based on her recent thesis for a PhD in Mythology from Pacifica. It was the opportunity to accomplish so many delights at the same time that I could not refuse, even though the workshop was only a week away.

The workshop was really interesting, as it addressed the possibility of finding a new mythic vision for Christianity in the postmodern era. I found myself in discussion with theologians, scientists, lawyers and educators about issues that are of deep concern for me as a pastoral leader. It was both spiritually and intellectually engaging, reminding me of much of the fun of seminary. I’d missed the long, heated discussions that raise such varied points of view, re-engaging our love for the Gospel and our love for our traditions even as we critique them.

But we also went to prayer with the monks four times a day to sing psalms and pray. The Benedictines welcome guests as if they were Christ himself, a Christ they acknowledge and welcome in each activity and quiet moment of their day. It is always such an extraordinary gift to be able to drop into the ongoing stream of prayer and praise and the beauty of the place that the community tends with such diligence. It enables a peace so deep it takes days to wear off. I found I was thirsting for God’s presence. How strange to be lonely for God in the place where God seems to be everywhere! But here it was, the ache of loneliness I had not seen until now, the longing for the touch of God’s Spirit in my search for a call. That touch came slowly through the week: in the silence after the singing, in the gentle sharing of our meditations, in the bread and wine of the Eucharist, in the creation of a community around the Word and work we shared.

I sometimes imagine, as sit in my usual place in the morning, that the monks are singing Lauds and that my new colleagues are living their ordinary lives again, just as I am. It is almost as if we had never come together for that week in July. But that’s not possible. We did come together to be Christ for and with each other, and though we may not see each other again in this life, we are all part of each other now. That time, that place, those sounds, those people are still present as I go forward. It’s how I found that God is with me on my vacation.