I "heard" a "call" during my 30 hours of driving to and from Virginia. I hestitate to say this.
I need to think of another word for "call (calling, called)." It is a church word, and like other church words, it meaning has been highjacked. In my church experience, being "called" means God gave you some special direction that applies to you and not necessarily me. In a way, it assumes that we all are equally attentive to the inner promptings and that it is all God's responsibility. We absolve ourselves of our responsibility by claiming that God called us (or didn't call us), so its his fault. As in, "That's great what you are doing, you have been called. I feel perfectly comfortable not doing it because I am not called." It is a sort of excuse for inaction. We all sit around waiting for some call. Until it comes we just keep sitting around.
A typical response to going under the bridge:
X: "You have been called to help the homeless."
Dictionary.com has 69 entries for the word call; 33 for the verb and 30 for the noun. I wonder which definition this response is referring to?
The "call" I am referring to is the 4th dictionary.com definition under "calling":
a strong impulse or inclination. The only other synonym for this form of the word is mission. Substituting one church word for another is no help.
Perhaps I should create a new word to use.
Anyways, as I was driving and was reflecting on the new year, I had a strong impulse to do something hard this year. Not as in running a marathon, but related to justice and compassion, like free a slave or save a life.
I need to work through this with my "pack."
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