Vocation

My name is Phoebe Oler. Here I go.

During this weeks staff meeting on Monday night I was able to deeply reflect on what is important to me in prayer and in life. It began with Bach Sunday and the cantata about the evils of the hypocrisy of Christianity: when one doesn’t act what they preach. This is something I’ve always been very sensitive to because of the atmosphere of my hometown Episcopal church.

I began singing in the choir when I was 7 and I sang every Sunday for 8 years. So, I saw the same parishioners every week. I had a very complicated relationship to my church growing up and I will probably continue to write about it as the year progresses. My work at Marsh Chapel has stirred a lot of memories and reminded me of many parallels and perpendiculars between the two experiences.

 As a kid, I was always torn up by the fact that adults attended church and sat and listened to the sermons and prayers every single week, but never seemed to change. [It seemed] they heard the word of the lord and it went out the other ear in the same breath.

Specifically, the drunks were still drunks, the miserable were still miserable, the mean were still mean. I was always drawn to watching and observing these specific type of folk.

These types of individuals drove me insane. Why???!!!! I would wonder. I still do, but I learned to understand that some people can’t see the beauty in life for a multitude of reasons. Whether its rational or irrational, self-inflicted or a result of adversity, some people get lost along the way.

The hopeless. Thinking precisely anatomically of the word: hope less, less hope. Devoid of hope.

Hope is innately a human trait. (Who am I to say that my dog doesn’t hope I return home soon??) Rather, the extent to which the mind can hope is uniquely human.

When humans display obvious signs of hopelessness, I am always struck in the pit of my stomach with a lighting bolt. There is something eerie about these people. They remind me of ghosts. Walking around as shells of something that once was. I can’t help but think of them as the child they were. Undoubtedly full of light and joy and hope. Excitement and aloofness. Something pulled them down. I don’t know when or how, but something chained itself to their ankle. Or clung to their neck and drags alongside of them.

Something tortures them every-single-day.

What is beautiful about the human species is our ability to live for more than just survival and reproduction. When I see someone who has lost their vision, it makes me appreciate how lucky I am to have been blessed with hope and the ability to see the works of God within myself and in the world.

I wish I could sprinkle pieces of my eyesight on the miserable, the wicked, the drunk, but I can’t teach the blind to see.

So, it was the hopeless that I decided to pray for to close the meeting.