Being Useful, Missing Larry

It's amazing what a Monday afternoon like this can do - and it's amazing how rewarding it can be to a pastor, to feel like you're contributing something of value to the church through your work.

I got in at 1:30 this afternoon. Since then I've met with one student for 90 minutes to discuss a matter of deep importance - and felt like I helped clarify some issues without either a) caving on Lutheran theology or b) speaking ill of those who think differently of the matter in question. It was a wonderfully invigorating conversation - the kind of thing that led me to think about doing campus ministry in the first place, because I remember enjoying many of the same conversations with my own campus pastor, Larry Meyer.

I met with another student at 4:00, the one who spoke so honestly last week and with whom I've been patching things up. No, the situation we're working isn't resolved to our satisfaction yet, but from our end it is (a third party isn't helping as we hoped), and I think that's the far more important matter. Again, feeling good about that conversation because I didn't have to dance around the questions as I once had done.

Another student is due in a few minutes, for a personal conversation about some troubling stuff. I have an idea of what some of the issues may be, but not the specifics - again, it's rewarding to feel as though I've built a reputation as one with whom a student might speak openly and honestly (and it's back-breaking to write about this without even tipping the gender identifiers for confidentiality's sake!).

I feel as though I'm already having more of an impact here than I was in my previous call - for the simple reason that this is just a better fit for my gifts in ministry. I feel as though I'm making a difference more often and with greater depth, and that is fulfilling in a way I had somewhat forgotten. In 1942, Bonhoeffer wrote an essay to his co-conspirators Hans von Dohnanyi and Col. Hans Oster and his immediate family, entitled "After Ten Years." In it he wrote:

We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds; we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretense; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical. Are we still of any use? What we shall need is not genuises, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, straightforward people. Will our inward power of resistance be strong enough, and our honesty with ourselves remorseless enough, for us to find our way back to simplicity and straightforwardness?

Now, I am in no way comparing myself to the conspirators against the Nazis. But I find myself intrigued by the question, "Are we still of any use?" I wonder if some of the angst and ennui with which many of us struggle comes from this question - and with the way we must struggle against the tide of materialism, affluenza and external rewards to find the deeper reward of fulfilling vocations and lives lived with meaning and purpose.

Today, I have been "of use." I have, by the grace of God, been allowed to contribute to those I am called to serve, and I find myself thinking of Larry again and again as I get comfortable in this new call and in these new surroundings. I remember the deep sense of joy that Larry exuded when he was my pastor, and I feel it beginning to fill me as well, joy I couldn't find previously because I wasn't as useful as I'd hoped I would be. Maybe that's the true meaning of vocation, to contribute, to benefit others through your work, to be "of use;" whatever it is, I'm feeling it tonight, and Larry's absence as well. Miss ya, Herr Meyer - can't wait to sit back in the kingdom, enjoy a beer with you and tell you all about it.