Waiting for the Knock at the Door

When somebody talks about having a calling , how do you react?

Can you relate from your own experience of being drawn to a life choice by some force outside yourself? Do you feel a twinge of envy? Are you irritated at what sounds like pious, self-justifying twaddle? Is having a calling (or claiming to have a calling) the opposite of being unsure of where you're going in life? Is a calling something that assures you you've made the right choices, and now all you have to do is play them out?

Or could having a calling mean trusting you're where you're supposed to be right now and what the next step has to be, but not having a clue about what happens after that?

When I was taking Sacred Intimacy training, one of our teachers said that before every session--once we'd prepared the space of meeting and were simply waiting for the client's knock at the door--we ought to repeat to ourselves. "I know what I'm doing. I have no idea what I'm doing."

 I've come to believe that that moment of waiting for the knock is the essence of calling: not the reassurance that it will all unfold as it ought, much less that you're confident in what you're doing, but trust, in the face of uncertainty, that this is the right place to be, and that radical availability is the right way to meet the unknown Visitor. You expect the knock will come, but you don't know for sure. You don't know what to anticipate once the door opens, can't know the full depths of the person you'll greet in that moment (even if you've met many times before), can't predict the complex swirl of emotions, longings, and history that he'll share when he comes into the room. But you trust that you need to be where you are, and that meeting him is why you're there.