Faith: April 2010 Archives

A few days ago, I had a Dream. I'm not talking about a dream - you know, those nightly forays into garbage-collection your brain indulges in when not dealing with the normal routine of daily life. I'm talking about a Dream. A Dream is when you get messages, whether divinely inspired, precognitive, or whatever, that convey some important meaning. For instance, the Dream that warns you against getting on a train, just before the train you were scheduled to get on plows into a truck full of explosives, or the Dream that gives you a message from your grandmother, who had just died an hour earlier, on another continent, while you were sleeping, so you had yet to receive any notification of it (or, for that matter, any notification that your grandmother was in anything other than perfect health).

In my Dream, I was walking through a field with a friend - who it was, I didn't know even in the dream - when I was shot. The arrow hit me in the shoulder, but that was only because Ra had flown down and spoiled the aim of the shooter, a woman who had been aiming for my heart.

While the arrow was removed from my shoulder, Ra looked me in the eyes (and let me tell you, having a bird of prey look you dead in the eyes is damned disconcerting) and asked me, "What are you?"

I answered, "I'm a shoe salesman."

Ra kept looking at me and shot back, "So why aren't you doing it?"

When I woke up, the dream kept eating at me. Why aren't I doing it? Why aren't I doing what? Being a shoe salesman? What is that supposed to mean, anyway? No one ever accused me of being quick on the uptake - at least, not that I know of - but it felt like I should know what Ra was talking about. Then it finally hit me. As a priest, I'm in the job of selling shoes. Spiritual shoes, yes, but still, the point is that I'm supposed to be outfitting people to get on with their lives, to armor them against the hardships they face out in the real world, so they can get out there and do the things they need to do. And I just haven't been doing that very well.

Whatever the excuse - I've been sick, I've been too tired to get out, I don't have the inspiration to write, whatever - the fact is, I've been falling down on the job. When it gets so obvious that I get reminded of that fact in a Dream, it's obviously time for me to wake up and take stock of what I'm doing with my vocation.

In many ways, it's easier to do this job when part of an active community, because a lot of your life is ruled by the need to serve that community. Be up in time to do sunrise service for those who have loved ones to commemorate, work through the day on caring for those in the community, do sunset service with the active members of the faith, spend the evening preparing for the next day, rinse, repeat.

When your day is ruled by the service you do, it's easier to stay focused, and perform the duties your god expects of you. When you're alone, serving your god as an individual, it becomes so much easier to think to yourself "I'll just sleep in this morning, He won't mind if I do my morning prayers later" or, "I can't interrupt my friend just for sunset prayers. I can do them later" or even, "I feel like crap today. He won't want to hear my prayers when I'm feeling so cranky and out of sorts."

When you're a shoe salesman, you don't get to choose whether to sell shoes, or who to sell them to. Whether it's the nice old lady with twenty cats, or the punk with enough metal in his face to make a metal detector melt down, my job is to provide them with the best possible shoes for their needs. Sometimes I'll have just the right shoes, sometimes I'll have to refer them to someone else. But if I'm doing my job the way I'm supposed to, every one of them is going to go away with the shoes they need. Will I always be successful? I seriously doubt that. But if I'm working to the best of my ability, and focusing on the service I'm supposed to be providing, then I'll be able to look at my Lord at the end of the day and be honestly proud of the service I've given.