"At root a professional is one who makes a profession of faith"

This a pregnant word, and we often miss the birthings of our words. I first had an inkling of the strangeness of this word professional when reading Don Quixote. He would speak of his profession of arms. It spoke to me of a calling and indeed a faith in something larger.

Especially for ministers striving to understand the latest leadership model, the idea of professionalism has become the slick business like way of doing things that runs many a corporate mega-church. We are concerned with how the world sees our shabby way of running things, a by product of volunteerism in local congregations. We see the slick ads and gimicks of the world, its programs and attractions and (sometimes rightly) lament that the church seems so far behind.

Parker Palmer criticizes professionalism.

"As professionals, we like to define ourselves in ways that stress competence, high standards, an ethic of service, personal sacrifice, and so on. But in 'Active Life' Chuang Tzu is examining the shadow side of professional activity, and he would probably propose a different deffinition: A professional is a person who has invested long hours and much money to develop and allegedly rare ability that others can be convinced to need and to purchase at a high price. Admittedly partial, such a definition points to the ways that we professionals get caught up in the 'world of objects' that Chuang Tzu describes. in the spinning of those interlocked illusions that too often trap the professional and the society in a vicious circle of nonsense" (41).

Too often I feel the weight of that definition. I see other pastors who are thriving and at the helm of large churches and doubt that I have that stuff in me - I am not professional enough. Profession as a matter of faith is another more noble thing. I know that one whom I profess is able to use even me.

On the other side I do feel it in the pit of my stomach when I hear people suggest that pastors need not be professional. Couldn't we simply be happy amateurs who make a living by another vocation? Couldn't any spiritually mature of the laity do this? As much as I like the idea of the body ministering to each other in an organic way, I find my own calling challenged by such thoughts. For good or ill, my vocation is a profession of ministry just as Quixote's was a profession of arms.

Excellence in all we do is a spiritual thing. It is done as worship. It is the stuff of the faith kind of profession rather than the soulless slickness of professionalism.

Defining Spirituality

Borrowing some from Rolheiser, I would define Spirituality as what we do to sort out and express the divine madness in our souls. The restless longing of the dreamer, the quixotic refusing to accept the surface reality, the madness given by the gods by which we hunger for more, for meaning, for completion. Spirituality seeks to express these longings and fill them with something Divine.

At the beginning of the television series Heroes, Mohinder Suresh asks what it means to be in the image of God,

"Where does it come from? This quest? This need to solve life's mysteries though the simplest of questions can never be answered. Why are we here? What is the soul? Why do we dream?
Perhaps we'd be better off not looking at all. [But] that's not human nature. Not the human heart. That is not why we are here."

It is indeed maddening to seek transformation into the image of our creator. A Holy Madness is appropriate for all who lay themselves down on the operating for this intense surgery. To be conformed into the image of Christ is to be made into the Human of Design, to be the kind of person who looks out for others, the kind of person who is not only holy as his maker is holy, but is also to be the kind of citizen that would make a truly just world possible. It would be making a world the way God had intended it.

This formation into the image of Christ is not an undertaking, but rather an in-working. In John 21 the disciples fished all night and caught nothing, but a word from Jesus and their own effort to cast the net and haul it in was met with the grace of 153 large fish. We can work all night long and get nowhere, but how blest our work can be when we do just those actions Jesus has directed us. We clothe ourselves with him as we hear his voice. We put flesh on the word, we incarnate it, this is the way of spiritual formation.

Tilting at windmills

In Holy Longing Ronald Rolheiser suggests that Social Justice is different from personal charity, that if we are to engage in Social Justice, we must address the systemic concerns of injustice rather than just meeting the needs that result from the injustice.

A few years back, our local ministerial association started what we called Project Caritas to be an arm of our collective churches to address social justice concerns. The main effort of the project was a fund, fueled by our community Lenten offerings. Since I was so gung ho about engaging in social justice, I became the treasurer. We used the money to meet the urgent financial needs of people who came to us. A couple weeks back we ran out of money, and decided to end the project.

The question remains, "did we engage in social justice at all?" Did we address any of the underlying injustices that caused these problems. We talked about them... Things like unemployment, health-care costs, a difficult economy, but what could we do? Addressing such systemic issues seem too big for state or even federal government to handle. What can we do?

I wished we could start a revolution like Che, but without the guns.

The task is too much, I feel like a solitary Quixote in a world of injustice. Yet Rolheiser calls this work, our tilting at the windmills, a non-negotiable essential to our spiritual formation.

I am reminded of Willard's Divine Conspiracy: we undermine the world's system by living in the kingdom of God, by becoming like Jesus, so that the kingdom rules in the areas of our influence. In so doing we subvert the world and chip away at evil's hold, the devil's injustice.

Rolheiser agrees. "The struggle for justice and peace is not ultimately about winning or losing but about fidelity."

We go on tilting at windmills, regardless of our results, because ultimately our motivation isn't our own gain, or notoriety, nor is it even about humanity and making the world a better place. Our motivation is that divine fire within that compells us to live, and to love. It is the beating of a heart much too big for our chest, indeed too big for the universe to contain. So we fight on. Not with the arms of Quixote or Che, but with peace, love and a subversive spirituality.

On the loss of a friend

Here I stand mourning the death of Don Quixote of la Mancha. His madness in committing himself to his profession gave me strength to commit myself to mine. Now I bid farewell to Alonso Quixano the sane. Thank you for the joy and sweetness your delightful madness has brought me. May my own peculiar madness be as sweet to me, and sanity find me praising God!