GOOOOOAAAAAALLLLLLL!!!!!!

I know nothing about sports, especially soccer, but I have to say, I do like the way Latin American soccer announcers get all excited when their team scores and scream, "GOOOOOAAAAAAALLLLL!!!!"

I've been thinking a lot about goals lately.  For perhaps the first time since I graduated from seminary in (God save us!) 1984, I have a very concrete goal.  Walk 500 miles on El Camino.  I've been astonished at how having a specific, measurable goal has transformed my workout routine.  As I've said before, I've been working out more or less regularly for 11 years now.  No real goal except not to fall apart, not to gain (too much) weight, and not to die young (like my parents) of a massive heart attack.  

But now I have this clear, definite, highly defined goal.  Suddenly I'm at the Y one or two hours a day instead of 30 or 45 minutes.  Now that the weather is warming up, I make it a priority to find time to go out for a long walk with a loaded backpack, even if it means working longer hours the rest of the week.  


Having a goal has transformed my workout routine. I'm more much intentional and focused.  What I'm doing counts for something.  All of this has made me wonder how this can translate into other parts of my life.  But first I have to figure out what are the goals of my life.  As I enter the seventh decade of my life, what is my goal for the time I have left? 

I don't feel called to make any big changes--I love my life.  I have an amazing husband who puts up with me far more than I deserve, I have work I love and that I find meaningful if sometimes exhausting, I have 2 terrific children, and 2 fabulous grandchildren.

But I want to be as intentional about my spiritual preparation for El Camino as I am about my physical preparation.  So I have spent quite a little time meditating on what, within the framework of what I know is an extraordinarily fortunate life, is my goal, my calling in the last third of so of my life.

Really, the question as I keep coming back to it, is what is my calling as a Christian?  What is my calling, my goal, not as a pastor, not as a "professional" Christian, but as a profoundly imperfect, deeply flawed, frankly sinful follower of Jesus?

I thought, perhaps I should stop thinking about writing a book and actually DO it.  And maybe that will happen--I swear half the people who walk El Camino end up writing a book about it.  But writing a book didn't feel big enough, or at least not long-term enough. 


Then I thought, maybe I should be more active in social justice issues.  I feel strongly about children's issues--maybe I should become an activist and a volunteer.  Good start, important to me, but it felt like a piece of the puzzle, not the whole answer.



What I keep returning to is the idea that my goal, my calling, as a Christian is to be like Jesus.  Liberals like to make fun of the WWJD (What would Jesus do?) trend as overly simplistic, and I suppose it is.  But it is its very simplicity that I find it profoundly wise.  It's a pretty simple question that can keep you up at night.  And it is a question I am asking myself more and more.  

There's an old joke where a husband says, "I make all the important decisions in our marriage.  Who should win the World Series.  The way to fix Washington.  How to achieve world peace.  My wife makes the little decisions--how we spend our money, how to raise our kids, what house we should buy."

I've been conscious of Christian values in big ways--my overarching values as a voter, as a citizen, as a pastor.  But now in all kinds of little ways, I have started to judge my actions by the  question "What would Jesus do?"  Would Jesus would make snarky remarks about people, which I am all too prone to do.  How would Jesus treat the transient that just interrupted my very busy day and needs help? What would Jesus do with that person who is clearly an idiot but is nevertheless a child of God? 

How can I be more like Jesus?  This is one of the big questions I will be taking with me on my pilgrimage. Don't know if I will come home with any answers...This may be one of those times when, as the German poet Rilke says, you just have to learn to love the question.