I named this blog "The Temporary Carey" because I planned to blog - temporarily - about a short-term mission trip. My original plan was to post a few pre-trip musings, then make one entry for each of the seven days of the trip, then perhaps a single wrap-up. But here it is over a week after we returned and I find myself continuing to meditate on the experience. Perhaps I'll finish up this time, but no promises.
What prompted this latest round of pondering was some remarks in "The Abbot's Notebook," the weekly newsletter from Philip Lawrence, OSB, abbot of the Benedictine monastery of Christ of the Desert in northern New Mexico. Each Wednesday, the abbot emails a column in which he meanders from gossipy news about the latest activities of the monks to some insightful thoughts on the nature of the monastic life and the Christian life in general. (You can read these pieces and subscribe to the hebdomadal screed at christdesert.org/About_Us/Abbot_s_and_Cellarer_s_Pages/Abbos_s_Notebook/index.html.)
The Benedictines are primarily a contemplative order. They dedicate themselves, as Thomas Steagald recently wrote in The Christian Century (June 15, 2010, "Pay Attention"), to "one place and one conversation." One place: the monastery; one conversation: prayer. And so, pondering the spiritual discipline of service, the good abbot relates that "lots of times I am asked how monks can possibly serve others when they stay hidden in their monasteries. Of course the monks serve one another and that is serving others. We also serve others in our prayers. There are lots of ways of serving one another." And then he drops the big right hand: "Not all of us are called to be missionaries. Not all of us are called to run soup kitchens or shelters."
Or to go on frequent mission trips?
Short-term mission trips have become, it often seems to me, the gold standard of Evangelical piety. Temporarily Careying on in exotic locales (like Fort Wayne, Indiana!) often becomes a de facto validation of one's zeal for both the social gospel and the salvation of the lost. This is, on the whole, a good thing, I believe. After all, when I was a Christian teen or college student, the big buzz was your church youth group's ski/Bible retreat.
But I have a confession to make: I don't like them very much.
This is a purely personal statement. My limited experience leads me to believe that such trips have tremendous value, both for those who go and those to whom they go. But for me . . . . I know that I ride the short bus when it comes to emotional intelligence; if emotions were football teams I'd be the Detroit Lions. Still, I keep hearing people who return from mission trips enthuse about how wonderful they feel and I just don't get it. Then, too, there's the spiritual aspect of it all. What I mean to say is that I don't receive a big spiritual jolt from this kind of thing either. I don't worry about this too much; I learned a long time ago that God does some of his best work on me when I'm not looking and that I can't take on more of the likeness of Christ if I keep whipping around to catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Obedience trumps emotions every time in the spiritual life - and in life in general, I tend to suspect.
Perhaps all of this says something, not about the validity of short term mission work in general, but about my own vocation. Even Baptists, I sometimes suspect, need contemplatives, though I can't think we'll ever value them very highly. Then again, a good contemplative doesn't worry about being valued. Could it possibly be - and could I confess it if it was - that God calls me to one place and one conversation, to this kind of spirituality, one that makes people shake their heads and wonder - as the abbot says they apparently do about him - how I can be a Christian at all? A friend recently posted on Facebook about a routine Sunday service at the inner-city church he leads: cleaning human excrement from the floor, calling 911 for a medical emergency and breaking up a fistfight. And I sit in a study and read books and try to pray a lot. Frankly, I'd rather be him when it comes sheep-and-goat time.
We should always suspect our own carnality, but we should also respect our own calling. Sorting out the two in the uber-deceitful human heart constitutes the art and science of the Christian walk.
Abbot Lawrence points out that Christian service often means embracing the ministry right before our eyes rather than romantically questing for it in some far-flung locale. "The service that Christ presents to us in the Scriptures is also a simple
serve to anyone who happens to come into our lives. There is no sense of Jesus seeking out people to serve: instead they
come into His life over and over." I'd quibble with that last line. "Let us go into the next towns, that I may preach there also: for therefore came I forth." - Mark 1.38 Still, there were plenty of times when Jesus tried to go all Howard Hughes but God seemed to have emblazoned his back with a giant bull's eye visible only to the pitiful. "And from thence he arose , and went into the borders of Tyre and Sidon, and entered into an house, and would have no man know it: but he could not be hid." - Mark 7.24
So maybe that is my call, not a very high one but perhaps all the same a necessary one. Perhaps the Spirit directs me to pray globally while acting locally.
But the good abbot spoils it all when he adds that "for myself, I can often tell if something is a call of the Lord by my own response to it. If it is difficult and I want to avoid it, I can be pretty sure that this comes from the Lord."
