When I began my year-long chaplain residency last September, I thought I had bought myself some time—time to “ride out” the economic downturn, deepen my relationship with God, and set my life on a new course. A year later, I find myself facing a situation quite different from what I expected. The economy still sucks, competition for jobs is fierce, and pursuing my call to ministry feels like a luxury. Chaplaincy jobs are not only few and far between, but they pay a pauper’s wages—or nothing at all. I’m all for volunteer work, but a girl’s gotta eat. And this girl, in particular, is tired of living hand to mouth.

It seems I’m at a crossroads. One the one hand, there’s my call—a “still small voice” with a give your-life-up-and-follow-me ring to it. On the other, there’s my desire to have some comfort in life—to nest, settle down, accumulate resources and things like a long-term relationship, children, a house, nice curtains for the windows.

The one path feels too scary, too radical. How would I even do it? Become a priest? Not an option (if I stay a Catholic). A nun? I don’t think so. The other smacks of boredom and needless anxiety: driving the kids hither and yon to 500 extra-curricular activities after a 12-hour day at work.

I realize I’m grossly simplifying, not to mention exaggerating, the options, but that’s just how my mind works. And besides, my polarization of these two paths probably typifies the conflict many of us feel as we negotiate our way through a world that so often demands that we ignore our spiritual life. It’s a true cross we bear, stretched between God and mammon, spirit and flesh, doubt and faith. As one priest put it, our challenge may lie not in choosing one or the other, but in somehow integrating the opposites, the false dualisms that threaten to tear us apart from ourselves, God, and each other.

GOD’S IN THE WAY
It’s a momentary comfort to contemplate the challenges facing me and so many other people right now who are out there looking for a livelihood. But it all evaporates when I face that umpteenth rejection, that umpteenth closed door on the job hunt. I don’t know about you, but I just feel scared—on a visceral, survival-mode level. I’m talking the roof over my head, the food on my table, the clothes on my body, my life as I’ve known it for so many years. What could possibly be the meaning of all this? And how can I hold onto faith amid such seeming gloom?

Anselm Gruen, a Benedictine monk from Germany, who wrote a book called Everybody Has an Angel, has a theory about closed doors, or more specifically, blocked paths. He calls it the “angel who blocks the way” and refers to the story of Balaam and his donkey in the Book of Numbers.

Balaam, a prophet and soothsayer, is asked by a pagan king to curse Israel, with the promise of a huge reward. He sets off on his journey but doesn’t get very far because the angel of God is standing in the way with a big sword. The angel is invisible to Balaam, but not to his donkey. The donkey halts before the angel, evoking Balaam’s anger and frustration. He beats the donkey in an attempt to get her to do his will, but the donkey refuses. Finally, the angel reveals himself to the prophet, who then understands that God has been thwarting his path, because it is the wrong path to take.

Perhaps the closed doors, rejections, and thwarted plans we experience on our job search are God’s way of saving us from the wrong path—a path that is not true for us and that leads us astray from God’s plan for us. Perhaps when we encounter resistance from the outside world, we should, as Gruen says, “look for the angel who is standing in our way,” inviting us to “think about the whole situation.”