The God of the present tense

Since my last post life has gotten very interesting and has been completely turned upside down in relation to what it was. I have gotten married to my best friend and I have started my DPhil in the University of Oxford. 

For a long time I had liked the idea of studying in Oxford or Cambridge. I remember upon finishing school investigating to find out which universities had degrees in biological anthropology and finding that the university of Oxford had the course - but being incredibly disappointed to find that merely the application cost 50 pounds - a fortune for an unemployed 17 year old in Brazil. In spite of Granny mentioning her musings that I perhaps should apply for a university in the UK, the dreams died out fast with the notion of overseas fees. Now, 8 years later I found myself in the very university I had dreamed about - and with full funding and a stipend. 

But more than that, my days outside of working hours have been completely changed - after moving around and doing life solo I now have someone I love deeply to come home to, to listen to, to have interesting discussions over breakfast or at night when the lights are out. The dreadful feeling of loneliness that haunted me has suddenly been extinguished by constant friendship and companionship. 

The strange thing I have found in the sequence of unlikely events that has brought me to the place in life that I am currently in, is the realisation that I have crossed the finish line I was aiming for. The dream has become day to day life. The hope of having a family, doing life with Jonathan is now every waking moment spent at home. An ancient university is not a vague notion of a 17 year old in Brazil, but where I spend a good part of my day. I have found that the strangest aspect of a dream is that sometimes it can in fact become reality, and that is almost as - if not more - terrifying than a dream being lost. 

I found that for the first time I was not aiming at the next holiday in camp Sol da vida, nor to get into university, or to get a masters, or to get a DPhil, or to plan a wedding. I crossed the finish lines I had been progressively setting up for myself, and I suddenly found myself confused.

The change was not only in my psyche, but it was even in my relationship with God. For so long so much of my time spent in prayer was about if we should get married, if I should go back to Ireland, if I should apply to come to England (in the form of work or a PhD)... and suddenly, when all the cards of the game were played I realised how much of my relationship with him had been less about getting to know him and more about what I should do. My 'special calling' in life became so important to be uncovered, like a lost secret or a locked room that I forgot all about the Caller. 

Perhaps it is because of a very strange and scientifically inexplicable sequence of events bringing me into life in this world that I had some narcissistic notions of grandeur - surely I was put here to do something extraordinary. Surely I had to work hard to do memorable things. But, at the end of the day, even though the ideas I had were ambitious the reality is that Oxford University is a university like any other - with good things and bad things (plus a lot of latin and some funny clothes that make us look like penguins). Where I have to wake up, read, study and work on a day to day basis. There have been no supernatural occurrences that have made me especially smart or capable. If anything, it has been an experience where I did very well in things I thought I was terrible at and terribly at things I thought I was good at. 

Where is God in all of this? What is his next great act? When is the big reveal of the next incredible thing I can do? 

As I worked through all this, Christmas came in perfect timing. Even though not accurate in date as to when Jesus was actually born, it still celebrates a pretty remarkable event in the world. One of the largest events of cosmic significance. An event that people had been waiting for and prophesying about for centuries, something that many believed to be a dream, came crashing into the world we know very unexpectedly. God himself would come, whom many expected would come as a strong military and/or political figure to free his people! And instead of crashing thunder and him coming into scene strong and larger than life with the sound of trumpets, sound effects, light effects, a Gandalf-like picture riding in white to save them all... in comes a baby? Possibly one of the weakest most vulnerable creatures possible? Born not even in an inn or a house but to a poor teenage girl in a stable? God himself would come through the pain of labour, with messy blood in a smelly stable to a likely very scared couple of newlyweds? Talk about a cosmic anticlimax. 

But this was the thing that hit me about how I was trying to understand my 'calling' and meaning in the world. I had this vague idea I had constructed of grandeur, when in fact my dream is a day-to-day job like any other. But this does not make it less important. Similarly, in spite of angels coming to speak to Mary and Joseph, perhaps in that moment of birth, with pain and effort or even as Jesus was growing up they didn't necessarily think about how significant this was in history. In fact, if we look at the Bible there are some extraordinary events - like the parting of a sea, a virgin birth, blind men being healed to see. But an awful lot of the Bible has all the nitty gritty messy things of every day human life: marriage, birth, good decisions and bad decisions. The kings and the peasants all have roles, the prophets had families and children, political events take place and economic negotiations are made. God is not only present in the larger than life events. He was as much the God of David when they have to go to battle as he is the God of Ruth and Naomi when in a patriarchal society God gives them food and a family. 

I thought the main point of my relationship with God was figuring out what calling he had for me in this vague thing called 'the future', but he is not a distant God like a dream. He is the God of the present tense, of the simplest most ordinary human events. Many people are remembered in human history for doing big and important things - either for good reasons or bad reasons. And I confused having a calling that gave my life significance with having a calling that might be memorable. But importance and remembrance of an event are very, very different things. It is possible that the most important thing I may ever do in my life is to in one moment in time smile to a stranger that is having a very bad day. It may not be memorable to me, to the person or anyone else for that matter but God makes extraordinary events come from the fabric of day-to-day existence. 

In fact, I daresay that it is possible that the most commendable actions for our society - perhaps being a war hero in a particular battle, someone having one moment of bravery (or foolishness) seems very dim compared to how remarkable it is for someone to sacrifice their own life and dreams every single day to care for a sick child or parent. 

The Bible may have many impressive characters - people who served in the Persian, Egyptian and Babylonian court with important roles. But what made them remarkable people was not their position, but their daily life where they sought to know, love and please God. They just happened to reflect this in the work they did. The man that Christians are supposed to follow and imitate, Jesus himself was known because of how he did life every day, with the people that followed him, with the outcasts of society, with the lonely and the wounded. He made even the most mundane interactions - like having a meal or talking to someone - extraordinary because of his daily decisions. 

It has taken me a quarter of a century to realise that what defines me is not what I am building myself towards in my career or what I hope to be. Waiting to hear a supernatural calling I neglected the calling I already had before me: 

“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?"

I am called to follow him every day of my life, not on Sundays, weekends or bank holidays. Not only when I am happy, not hungry, not tired and the stars align in a particular way. I am not only called when there are flashing neon signs of where to go, or when I have received funding in a particular university. God is calling every day. Finding a calling or vocation is not about sitting and waiting for answers, but living daily calling to live and love in spite of questions.

"You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves - like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. The point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."
- Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a young poet