Called to Radicalism

This vocation promotion wall, meant for religious aspirants, highlights God's invitations to me at present. 

A dear friend once said that designing and facilitating training workshops give me orgasm. Of course, he was referring to how training work sets my heart on fire even if it sometimes overwhelms my introvert self. Finding this job and being entrusted with such big responsibility in a project that is the first of its kind in the Philippines therefore is a dream-come-true for me.

One can't have it all though. The timelines are quite tight.  Having been recruited late in the day, I had to catch up on work that was supposed to have been done two months ago. Nothing can vividly illustrate how challenging the time lines are as an experience last Monday, when I was asked to join a technical working group meeting, while I was in the midst of preparations for a training session with the staff of our project team the following day. In the course of the discussions, the government representative announced that they would have an activity the following day and that the participants in the training I would be conducting next week would be there. She suggested then that I send her a draft of the training design for the following week's session in time for their gathering.  I had to psychologically shut off everyone as I tried to prepare the design of a training session for the following week - right there in the middle of the meeting.

The coming weeks will see me traveling from Cotabato to Iligan to Zamboanga to facilitate training workshops for municipal social workers then back again to these three locations for the training of community para-social workers. If not for the time pressure, it would have been perfect, but as  a Jesuit priest says in his reflection on the gospel today, "A contemplative stance will be possible only when I am able to trust God radically, when I am able to embrace God in God's mystery, not to try to put Got into my neat and secure categories. A contemplative stance will be possible if am able to render myself vulnerable before God and keep hoping that as long as I breathe-God can work miracles in my life and draw out the best things from a storm."

There are days when my inner demons would tell me I am not suitable for this job. I am not the seasoned trainer that my bosses and team believe I am. In one of my lowest moments, the thought that God may have brought me here to set me up for failure even crossed my mind.  Thankfully, it's a thought that didn't last long enough for me to start packing my things and booking a flight to Manila. But really, there are days when I was wishing things would be a bit slower at work - this from someone who had been complaining about the slow life in this city!  If only things were more perfect, or at least according to my expectations and wants. . . .

As has been manifest in my journey these past months, I am unfortunately not being called to a life that's comfortable and secure. "Radical" seems to be the most apt word for this life that I am being called to live. A radical work engagement, a radical lifestyle change, a radical faith.  And perhaps it is not by accident that I am staying with the Oblates of Notre Dame Sisters who, with the rest of the OMI family, describe themselves as ones who "leave nothing undared" for God.

These days I only pray for the courage to turn to God when the storms - both inside and outside - become too overwhelming and to trust that God is with me, ready to calm the storms. There is nothing impossible for this radical God who embraced our humanity by being one of us.