Retreat 2012 Day 3

Last night was a strange night for turtles - some on the beaches but none laying. The night was hot - I was in short sleeves and a bug jacket. I did not need the bug jacket.

Yesterday I started the second book which I brought with me - Bill Blaikie's The Blaikie Report: An Insider's Look at Faith and Politics. Bill was one of the resource people at the Atlantic Seminar in Theological Education which I attended last week. His introduction refers to political life as a vocation like ministerial call.

In the context of the Macedonian Call, that go me thinking about how we as church take what we do as a spiritual urging from God. In the United Church we often become hesitant about speaking of that which we do in spiritual terms. I often wonder if the 1988 decisions regarding opening of ordination regardless of sexual orientation would have been received with less controversy if the General Council commissioners had been more open about the sense of the movement of the Spirit experienced at that General Council.

I also suspect that finding our Macedonian Call will come from looking at the gifts and talents a church has and then building a group sense of vocation.