A vocation in a vocation

I wish I could hire Face to write a post for me because he does such a powerful job in expressing truths and personal realities in a way that grips you and helps us all to understand. Perhaps since you love dogs and dog spelled backwards is god and since I don't have a dog you might get a sense if I doubted your dog loved you and that you had a relationship with him how you would feel. Another dog lover would know the mysterious bond between man's best friend that to an outside observer looks like just a dumb animal that is incapable of any relationship. You are just making it up and extrapolating your own need for love and affection onto something incapable of giving you that.
I don't know, maybe another way is to think about an experience we all have in common concerning our conscience. We all know what it is like to want to do something but feeling somehow that we shouldn't or feeling we should do something but somehow not wanting to do it. Why is there sometimes this battle in ourselves? Conscience is a gift from God and knowing and loving the one who gave us that gift is deepening the effect on us. Making it incarnate in a way. We realize that actually there are principles and something that is above me that I can chose to reject or follow. When we reject these promptings, which we are free to do so, we feel unhappy and unfulfilled. When we follow them, which is why we have freedom in the first place, we are happy and at peace. These promptings may lead us to do something we don't fully understand or don't want to do, like give up all worldly possessions and live a life of intense sacrificial prayer. Yet if this is what God is calling me to do I do want it and in the end I will hopefully realize that it is what I should have wanted if I had known better. To tyhis you might say, see I told you - "you just did what you wanted to do." I wouldn't argue with you. However, right now I can assure you that it is not me, nor my subconscious, or some hidden desire that is causing me so much angst. it is the true and living God who loves me and knows me and what will bring me true happiness better than myself.

Quote: FrGamble

I can assure you that it is not me, nor my subconscious, or some hidden desire that is causing me so much angst. .

No you can't, nor can the most qualified
shrink, bishop, or shaman assure you
that it's anything but you telling you what to
do. For some reason you think you should
be leading the kind of life you describe, so
you're trying to find justification for it by
blaming god. It's what religious people do,
they seldom take responsibility for their
actions, it's either god or the devils fault.

You want to do this, just admit it and move
on to the next step. But you can't do that,
your Church wants you to be 'led' by god
and you need that buffer in between you and
your request to leave your present position.
So play it up, tell them your god is poking you
and prodding you in a big way to leave and
do something else. They'll believe it because
it's part of the game you've all been taught to
play. You're all just pawns in gods big chess game.

It gives your life meaning and purpose. You have
it easy, atheists have to come up with our own
meaning and purpose, we haven't hitched ourselves
to some organizations guidelines on how to live life.

Quote: FrGamble

I wish I could hire Face to write a post for me because he does such a powerful job in expressing truths and personal realities in a way that grips you and helps us all to understand. Perhaps since you love dogs and dog spelled backwards is god and since I don't have a dog you might get a sense if I doubted your dog loved you and that you had a relationship with him how you would feel. Another dog lover would know the mysterious bond between man's best friend that to an outside observer looks like just a dumb animal that is incapable of any relationship. You are just making it up and extrapolating your own need for love and affection onto something incapable of giving you that.
I don't know, maybe another way is to think about an experience we all have in common concerning our conscience. We all know what it is like to want to do something but feeling somehow that we shouldn't or feeling we should do something but somehow not wanting to do it. Why is there sometimes this battle in ourselves? Conscience is a gift from God and knowing and loving the one who gave us that gift is deepening the effect on us. Making it incarnate in a way. We realize that actually there are principles and something that is above me that I can chose to reject or follow. When we reject these promptings, which we are free to do so, we feel unhappy and unfulfilled. When we follow them, which is why we have freedom in the first place, we are happy and at peace. These promptings may lead us to do something we don't fully understand or don't want to do, like give up all worldly possessions and live a life of intense sacrificial prayer. Yet if this is what God is calling me to do I do want it and in the end I will hopefully realize that it is what I should have wanted if I had known better. To tyhis you might say, see I told you - "you just did what you wanted to do." I wouldn't argue with you. However, right now I can assure you that it is not me, nor my subconscious, or some hidden desire that is causing me so much angst. it is the true and living God who loves me and knows me and what will bring me true happiness better than myself.

FrG.

You do quite well expressing yourself. Paragraphs do help, though. I got lost a couple of times reading this; couldn't find my place. But that's mechanics

I agree about Face. A beautiful, gifted writer.

Can you get a sabbatical without losing your diocese? Perhaps a 3 to 6 month refreshment period.

There are always needy people. I would think, as a person who has built their life around answering those needs, each one takes a little of your strength and spirit into themselves. Usually, the thought you have helped them has to be enough reward that you can go and do it again and again.

But that has to be exhausting. No one is a bottomless well, even someone sustained by God.

I'm told the Japanese have 5 different words for gratitude. Each expresses a different degree of resentment.

I have had a couple of rather large examples of this in my own life. 2 people very close to me, I helped separately for many years. I did not ask any acknowledgement or payback in kind. And yet both resent enormously that I placed them into my debt by helping them, to the point they are no longer speaking to me.

I don't see their problem at all. I am very soul-weary and troubled that I lost them by helping and loving them. But I think it's a matter of perspective. And I think you might be experiencing a similar whats-the-use feeling (or I wouldn't have mentioned it). They certainly opened my eyes about gratitude and blessings.

So I guess what I'm saying is the work has to be its own reward. That you make a better community, more accepting of your values and tenets, which is inherently a selfish aim. That you do it for God as you understand him does not negate the non-altruistic part.

And I say that it's ok for you to work to mold the world as you want it to be. If nobody thanks you, thank yourself.

I don't know that I'm saying what I want to very well. Just that, once you have your purpose, it is fine for you to act on it if for no other reason than your personal satisfaction.

Quote: beachbumbabs

But that has to be exhausting. No one is a bottomless well, even someone sustained by God.

Why would it be any different for someone
being 'sustained' by a fantasy of a god than
it would be for an atheist. Just because you
think there's something there propping you
up doesn't mean things will be any better
for you.

Look at the Jews in the camps in WWII. They
prayed non stop for their god to rescue them
as they were daily marched off to the gas chambers.
They even had large prayer groups and it was
to no avail. Many of those rescued say they
lost their faith in the camps and never got it
back. Depending on a fantasy will only take you
so far, as they devastatingly found out.

Deities seem to do tricky things like send you all the way around the world, only to find out the answer was right behind you.

Quote: Evenbob

Why would it be any different for someone
being 'sustained' by a fantasy of a god than
it would be for an atheist. Just because you
think there's something there propping you
up doesn't mean things will be any better
for you.

Look at the Jews in the camps in WWII. They
prayed non stop for their god to rescue them
as they were daily marched off to the gas chambers.
They even had large prayer groups and it was
to no avail. Many of those rescued say they
lost their faith in the camps and never got it
back. Depending on a fantasy will only take you
so far, as they devastatingly found out.

I think you're conflating a couple of things here. It doesn't eliminate an atheist drawing energy or positivity or focus for another person to ask that of God. Regardless of its source, your mental attitude is everything when trying to reach other people. You can't give what you don't have.

I like the saying, God helps those who help themselves. I don't think relying passively on God to solve your problems or save you is ever enough. We have free will. We are thinking, feeling people, problem solvers, troubleshooters. But we are usually at our best when we help others, work outside of ourselves. That takes a replenishable core of strength.

I don't know what can be said about the Jews of the Holocaust. That was a failure of Man, not of God. Not just the reprehensible Nazis, but those who stood by and let it happen, or didn't question where all their neighbors were going when rounded up, or refused to see the humanity in those who were victimized. The best face I can put on it is that it can never be allowed to happen again. And yet it's happening right now to the Rohingas, did since the Holocaust to a dozen ethnic or religious groups . Shameful.

Not sure if this is a biblical principle, but there's some common wisdom that people learn more from mistakes than successes. In that case, you've got nothing to lose really.

Quote: beachbumbabs

Regardless of its source, your mental attitude is everything

You said: "No one is a bottomless well, even someone sustained by God."

My point was, 'even someone sustained by god',
like that's a real thing. It's why I mentioned the
Jews, they believed in god totally and it did them
no good whatsoever. They prayed and prayed
and not only were they not sustained, they were
ignored. As they had to be, there was no god to
hear their pleas.

That's the thrust of this thread. God isn't talking to
you, you're talking to yourself.

Evenbob I would like you to remember that the Holocaust was not the first time the Jewish people experienced great suffering. During the Babylonian Exile the chosen people were removed from their land, families, homes, and their temple destroyed. It was in this period that much of the Old Testament was written. If you want to see how one is sustained through suffering by God read just about any of the psalms. It is a psalm that Jesus quotes on the cross.

You also seem to think that everyone who suffered in the Holocaust lost their faith. I'm not sure why you think that or where you heard it. Read the story of St. Maxamilian Kolbe.

Finally, I can see that this is the direction you want to take the thread but again your circular arguments should be discussed in another thread.

Quote: FrGamble

Just an update I am going to meet with a local Benedictine Monk next week and possible see if he may become my spiritual director. As I mentioned I think the battle lines are being drawn in regards to me wrestling with this vocation in a vocation. Is this just a call from the Lord to prune some aspects of my life and to recommit myself to more intentional, intimate, and deeper prayer and simplicity in my life? Or is this a call to formally and boldly enter into an active monastery that has had a few hundred years of tradition of helping people do exactly what I mentioned above and in the midst of a community of brothers (something I don't have as a diocesan priest)?

Good luck in making the right decision. BTW: How are they set up? Just curious. My grandfather always talked of going to the "monastery" as a kid to pray, but I never heard of any monks living there. Might have just been what he called it, The area he went was full of every kind of church, and each nationality had their own. But I digress.

Are they living a bit out in the country, so the seclusion helps their lifestyle of connecting with God? Or just kind of in the city keeping to themselves. I find your consideration of this interesting because, well, I didn't think there were many monks in the USA or for that matter that many outside Eastern Religions, which seem to have many more.

Quote:

Oh by the way one development is that my family seems against the idea.

I can only imagine.