The High Calling: A Path Paved with Poetry

Today marks the end of The High Calling as an ongoing web site focused on work and faith.

My personal path to The High Calling was paved with poetry.

In the summer of 2009, I was having a conversation on Twitter with two people I had never met face-to-face. One was Jim Wood, who had a blog called Shrinking the Camel (now a Patheos/High Calling blog) and wrote on faith and work. The other was L.L. Barkat, who had a blog (or two, perhaps three) called Seedlings in Stone and was the managing editor of a web site I had just begun to visit, called High Calling Blogs (HCB).

We were talking about making sandwiches, wine, poetry, and a movie called Bottle Crazy. Within a few minutes, I composed a short poem encompassing all of those elements within the character count of one tweet. We laughed, but something had changed. An awareness, perhaps a bond, had formed with a poetic tweet that connected us.

Later that summer, I was in a bike crash and spent the night in a hospital so the doctors could watch my four broken ribs and partially collapsed lung. Unable to sleep with an oxygen mask on my face, I read Laura’s Stone Crossings: Finding Grace in Hard and Hidden Places straight through. It was rare for a book to speak directly, almost personally, to me, but that one did.

Eventually, I screwed up enough courage to start participating in the HCB poetry prompts. I started writing occasional articles. And then L.L. asked me (and Jim Wood, too), to be contributing writers. I made my first trip to Laity Lodge in the fall of 2010 – joining the rest of the “virtual” staff at the writer’s conference. I attended the poetry seminar, and so The High Calling, Laity Lodge and poetry came to be even more bound together in my mind.

In 2012, I became the Twitter editor and discovered The High Calling network, comprised of all of the people who had signed up with The High Calling and had an official network entry on the site.

I went exploring and realized The High Calling’s reach expanded beyond the site and beyond the virtual staff I had come to appreciate and love. It expanded beyond the office in Kerrville and that almost sacred place called Laity Lodge.

I discovered poetry in the network—not actual poetry and poems, although there was some of that, but poetry in the much broader sense of God’s people. To discover this network was, at times, to be overwhelmed by faith. A significant portion of the Bible is written in poetic form, and perhaps for that reason I find a strong connection between poetry and faith.

So, on behalf of The High Calling, I tweeted this network of God’s people, using Twitter to promote the links for their articles and personal blog posts. To tweet all network members all the time would have taken a staff of several people. But I tried.

Who is, or was, the High Calling network? Diana Trautwein. Lisha Epperson. Brock Henning. The Center for Faith and Work. Mari-Anna Stalnacke. Ed Cyzewski. Billy Coffey. Jen Sandbulte. The Theology Work Project. 4 Word Women. Jolene Underwood. Lynn Mosher. Zechariah Newman. Megan Willome. Linda Chontos. Jen Avellaneda. Maureen Doallas. Chris Peek. John Blase. Tanya Marlow.

And hundreds and hundreds more. My RSS reader overflowed with the blog postings of the network. I had to develop a second list of blogs to visit.

I read people who struggled and celebrated. People who hurt. People doubting their faith. People overcoming their doubts. People with seminary degrees. People with a high school education. Single people. People struggling to have children. People struggling to manage families. People who had published books, and people trying to publish books. People with addictions.

I read people who mourned the deaths of loved ones, and one way they had to deal with it was to write. I read people who laughed. I read people who suffered debilitating illnesses, and some who were dying. People who supported the right to bear arms and people who ardently believed in gun control. Political liberals, conservatives, moderates, and independents.

I read the incredible diversity that is God’s church. And I found poetry everywhere I looked, the poetry of faith, the poetry that is faith.

And I learned that, for all of our differences, for all of our politics and denominations, for all of our hopes and dreams and occasional nightmares, we are one in Christ Jesus.

Like all other human endeavors, The High Calling may pass, but that unity will always be.

Related: Change at the High Calling.

Photos: Various pictures of The High Calling staff activities during the past five years, all taken at Laity Lodge in the Texas Hill Country.

Can Camels Shrink? Or Only Grow?

Jim Wood, long known as @shrinkingcamel on Twitter before he threw off the cloak of anonymity and embraced his public persona, is “retiring” as the Work Editor at The High Calling this week.  

I met Jim online before I met him in person. It was via a web site devoted to faith and work, and this guy known only as Bradley Moore (a pseudonym) was commenting and posting. The site was retired a couple of years ago, but I had followed the camel over to his blog, and then we followed each other on Twitter.

One summer Saturday afternoon in 2009, the camel, Laura Barkat and I were tweeting on Twitter, the subject of the movie Bottle Crazy came up, and we exchanged a few lines of poetry. It was a fun thing to do, but that exchange led to poetry jams on Twitter and ultimately to the creation of Tweetspeak Poetry.

At the time, Laura was managing editor of The High Calling, and it wasn’t long before she enticed Jim to become the Work Editor and me a contributing editor.  Most of the articles I’ve written for The High Calling have been on work, and Jim has been my editor. He’s one of those editors who make it easy for a writer to write. We eventually got to meet face-to-face at an editorial retreat at Laity Lodge.

Jim’s the author of At Work As It Is in Heaven (I reviewed it here). I interviewed him at The High Calling about the book.

Now he’s headed back to college (with college-age daughters himself) to finish his MBA. And stay employed at his executive job (responsible for lots of stuff and people). And so he told us a few weeks back that he would be retiring from The High Calling.

It’s one of those decisions friends make that give you both joy and sadness at the same time.

And so, for Jim Wood:

Can Camels Shrink? Or Only Grow?

I saw a camel spit before

but never saw a camel shrink,

never saw a camel sink

at the oasis. One hump

or two, camels find it difficult

to slip through the eye of a needle,

even when lathered with olive oil.

I watch a camel slip away,

I watch a camel embrace his MBA.

I wish the camel well

at the oasis.

Photograph by Petr Kratochvil via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Saturday Good Reads

This was the week a pope resigned – the first time in almost 600 years.

It put me (and others) in mind of leadership.

U.K. PR/Social media guru Neville Hobson took a look at leadership principles from General Electric – and found six dimensions of leadership that (interestingly enough) apply to social media as well.

My friend Jim Wood (aka the Shrinking Camel) posted on determining your spiritual leadership profile.

Michelle DeRusha at Graceful went in another direction – and suggested looking at the pope’s announcement by listening with the eyes of your heart.

My friend J of India (at Neither Use Nor Ornament) has been posting a series of photos that could illustrate the problems of leadership – being between a rock and a hard place. My favorite (so far) is #2.

It was also the week for Valentine’s Day, and I think my favorite post on the subject was David Rupert’s “Love is like a fun-house mirror.”

I also saw a number of posts about what it’s like not having someone to send a valentine to. The word, in short, is lonely. “Passing Time” by pianist Paul Cardell captures that beautifully:

Photograph at top by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.