Backward Looks

I have an old engagement calendar--a "Book of Days" from 1985 that I have kept all this while because it has Emily Dickinson poems and illustrations for each week.  I found it in a desk drawer recently and discovered that the days and weeks exactly match up with 2013.  So, it is now on my desk top where I can read the poems and reflect on the appointments I recorded nearly thirty years ago!
     The first thing I notice is that I was using two colors of ink, turquoise for business, purple for personal.  They were from very fine point pens—I can remember just what they looked like.  I also notice that I remember all of the people whose names are jotted there and the exact point in my career that they represent.  I traveled a lot for work in those days, so there is a note to call the company travel agency to book a flight for an upcoming meeting.  Was it the convention in Reno or the conference in Washington, D.C.?  Or maybe one of the seminars in Nashville or Albuquerque.
     It was a new job then.  The same organization, but a lateral transfer from Director of Education (a tiny department) to Manager of two larger programs in a different department.  The organization had just moved to a larger space for an interim two or three years until a new headquarters could be built.  That week in September 1985, I was worrying about those upcoming meetings—shipping materials for presentations and about technology—to rent or to buy video equipment that was needed.
     The purple ink shows a rather quiet week.  Oh, there was no school on Tuesday because of Rosh Hashanah.  Other than that, a date with the piano tuner.  And, a dinner invitation.
      It is the latter that caught me up short when I saw it.  If it is true—and I believe it is—that we are better at seeing the patterns of our lives in retrospect, then this dinner was surely one of a series of significant events that set me off on a new path.  It was a path that would have been unimaginable  that night—and for several years thereafter. 
      The dinner was hosted by a couple who were very active in a church I had visited over the summer.  My family had moved to a new town, and though we had not attended church regularly, I thought it might be time to do so.  We were not the only dinner guests.  There was another couple new to the church, and we discovered that the common theme was that we all had "blended families."  It seemed to be a mark of extraordinary hospitality that simply built on the warm welcome we had received at worship.  And it was the gesture that cemented our intention to join that church.
       As someone who had fallen away from religious connections after college, I thought I was only looking for community—a way to connect in this new town.   But God does move in mysterious ways.  For this was a church that mentored well.  It had a reputation for feeding people into the seminary.  And, sure enough, some six years later, I, the most unlikely candidate in the world (in my own mind, anyway),
was mailing off my application.
      I could go on for a long while—and have—analyzing what it was that caused me to feel the nudge of the Holy Spirit and to respond.  Let it suffice for now to say that it was God working through the remarkable, committed and passionate people of that congregation, both clergy and lay, who showed me what a positive force their faith was in their lives.  They all lived it out in their various ways.  My way, as it happened, was ordained ministry.  Thanks be to God!