SABBATICAL REVIEW PART 3: DESIRE
Sometime in the middle of August (9 months into my sabbatical), my soul began to sense that the stubborn season of death and deconstruction was coming to a close, and I noticed new-found desires sprouting, much like beauty rising out of ashes--desolation to consolation, desert to garden, bleak dark winter to budding green spring. While receiving the desires as God’s gift to us in this season, I fully expect the “cycle” of death, deconstruction, and desire (or reconstruction) will continue throughout my life’s journey.
A few of my new desires include:
Partnership with Grace. It is true that my wife and I have been partnering throughout all these years of ministry, ever since we got married in 1990. I was already in the context of a full-time mission (since 1988), and my wife joined the cause with arms wide open. Generally speaking, the “partnership” for the last 30 years had me trailblazing and leading and my wife supporting. We both served under an organizational umbrella and accountability with different roles and responsibilities, so we were “partnering” together under an overarching cause we both believed in. Especially in the early years of marriage, Grace also gave much attention and energy to raising our four young children. The “new partnership” we are envisioning is discerning and doing ministry together side by side, no more me leading and her supporting. This time, truly functioning as one, recognizing each other’s gifts and passions not only to serve the same cause but walking the process and the road ahead together.
This leads to the next desire. Both of us want to invest the remainder of our lives to come alongside and help people discover their authentic and true selves, their God-given selves. We’ve already seen glimpses and early fruit of our labor, which we interpret as God’s affirmation and encouragement. To us, it translates into unspeakable joy of witnessing each person being fully alive. Being fully alive is nothing short of being in union with God. We’ve also witnessed our gifts complementing each other to which we are saying we want more. I am free-flowing while Grace provides security and familiarity through structure, for example. I tend to exaggerate with high energy while she is gentle, calm, and assuring. More specifically, a definitive call from God during this Sabbatical is the realization that “I must speak.” I am still in the middle of discerning how to “speak.” Speaking, communicating, writing, and training are also shared with Grace.
Desire for community. My wife and I do not want to be an island unto ourselves, as much as we love each other :). We want to either belong to or create a community that embraces and pursues discovering true selves. This community in my mind must be marginal, shielded from the dominant power and control game and from the efficiency and effectiveness trap, while maintaining connection to the dominant power so we can speak into it. It needs to embrace a posture of being counter-cultural and even counter-religious. I sense in my gut that how we do kingdom life needs to be rethought, away from conventional and accepted wisdom, patterns, and systems.
For community to be a true community, it will invariably have both contemplation and action integrated. One cannot exist without the other. Contemplation that is geared toward discovering true selves in safe space away from wooden and performance-driven religiosity or structures is what we believe is needed. Action that is not merely defined by external needs or wants but action that is a natural outflow of one’s true self would be refreshingly grassroots and authentic. This way, contemplation and action are seamlessly integrated and deeply connected to our true energy source: our soul created in the triune God’s image. Richard Rohr says this well.
“The words action and contemplation aptly describe the two dancing polarities of our lives. In classic Christian philosophy, Thomas Aquinas and many others stated that the highest form of spiritual maturity is not action or contemplation, but the ability to integrate the two into one life stance—to be service-oriented contemplatives or contemplative activists. By temperament we all tend to come at it from one side or the other.”
Ultimately, cultivating such a community of pilgrims that lives out the Great Commandment of loving God, ourselves, and our neighbors is our deep desire. This to me is no different from the union Jesus prayed in Gethsemane and the Kingdom’s call in the Lord’s Prayer.