The Necessary Instruments

Grace builds on nature, indeed; God uses what we hold - what He has put - in our hands. Moses' staff. David's slingshot. Levi a.k.a. Matthew's pen.

He also uses what He has put in our being, how He has built us - our talents, our temperaments, our passions - and, once we submit our will, turns them to our good. Peter's unabashed bravado. Paul's eloquence. And, yet again, Matthew's love of a good party.

One of the books I read over my life-changing period of discernment in BC, quite a few months ago, brought me to the realization of the two types of callings we must respond to: the universal and the individual. Again, although I wrote about it a while back, it would be apt to reiterate that the universal calling is one we share with all humans - the promotion of life: to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, protect the earth. But that apparently is not enough, because God made us so very uniquely and so differently gifted from each other that that cannot be our sole calling. And thus the individual calling: the pursuit of one's distinct path using our individual internal compass and other instruments God has equipped us with. The celebration and realization of the fullness of our individual potential; for indeed we were not given these gifts to hoard or store up or use in the undetermined future. We are to offer these gifts, back to the Giver, by using them to the fullest extent; by glorifying Him with them, to the fullest extent.

In my heart, I know now what my individual callings are - a happy awareness that I'm glad to have received just before I celebrate another year of life. I know that I am called to them because they are the things I am most passionate about, the things I am always excited to do, the things that I can keep doing without minding at all how much they exhaust me physically. Just like how I feel about my universal calling - which I've found to be serving God's poor at He Cares and wherever else they may be found.

To cook, to travel, and to write. Three of the individual callings I feel most strongly drawn to, and which I, together with similarly inclined partners who also happen to be great friends of mine, will celebrate God's goodness with. By God's grace, the "vehicles" to pursue these two directions will be officially launched, full-blast, on St. Ignatius' Feast Day (hah, no wonder that three of my partners are Ateneans!), which also happens to be "my" day as well. And how, you may ask, do we intend to do this?

By pursuing a fourth calling that I - we - feel drawn to heed and throwing (yet another!) big party that people won't very soon forget. The kind that Levi, a.k.a. Saint Matthew, our unofficial patron and assistant "overseer," would have loved. :-)