Haerenga Tapu – The Sacred Pilgrimage
Vocational Reimagining
by Amanda Salmon
She is wind and fire,
silence and song.
It seems slightly cliché as a Pentecostal pastor I would choose to write about the transformational work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. But indeed, I have! I am deeply curious about the One who teaches us to live into the unfolding shape of God’s calling. The One who draws alongside to help us identify and follow the vocational thread1 woven through our lives. The One who fills us and empowers us to lay hold of our eternal destiny2 in Christ. And so, I want to create some space here to explore these themes and share a little bit of my own haerenga of Spirit-led vocational reimaging.3
The Spirit is our sacred companion who generously illuminates the path before us, often provoking our impatience by lighting just one step at a time. Traveling together like this both deepens the mystery of vocational calling burning in our hearts and releases it. It deepens the mystery because the Spirit leads us in a way we do not know,4 and releases it because she changes our perception of reality5 by revealing the deep things of God to us.6 The Spirit empowers us to navigate the unavoidable risk and uncertainty associated with identifying, acknowledging, and pursuing our deepest spiritual longings and desires.7 Tending to us like a midwife through conception, gestation, birth, faithfully continuing to nurture life and gift through to maturity.
Clark Pinnock says it is the work of the Spirit to ‘orient people, wherever they are, to the mystery of divine love.’8 Therefore, it is our work to create space and establish rhythms in our lives that put us in sync with the kingdom of God,9 draw us into Love, and facilitate this holy ministry. One way we do this is by curiously examining our lives from the inside out, on our own, and with others.
The Spirit helps us to see with clarity who we are, and who we are not. She arouses our sense of wonder.10 Enticing us out from behind our insecurities, fears, and facades to embrace and embody who we are destined to be in Christ. The Spirit opens us up to recognise specific assignments that give expression to our unique giftedness and she empowers us to boldly step into them. We are not to snatch opportunities or take them by force, God supernaturally orchestrates the way for us and invites us to move forward with humility, wisdom, and agency.
It has been nearly three years since I followed a whisper and a promise, leaving the comfortable and familiar to explore the vocational unknown (in all aspects of my life). Shedding an old wineskin to fill the new. Along the way, I have felt exposed, displaced, disoriented, liberated, hopeful, and pregnant with expectation.
Walter Brueggemann suggests that human life consists of seasons characterised by orientation, disorientation, and new orientation. He describes orientation as “satisfied seasons of well-being that evoke gratitude for the constancy of blessing.” Disorientation as “anguished seasons of hurt, alienation, suffering, and death which evoke rage, resentment, self-pity, and hatred.” And new orientation as, “surprise when we are overwhelmed with the new gifts of God, when joy breaks through the despair.”11 Brueggemann explains that we move between these seasons in a multitude of different ways throughout our lifetime. Some movements will be extremely disruptive, while others may be quiet, seamless, and hidden – all will invite inner transformation. Reflecting on my own haerenga, I can see these movements in my own life, and recognise that I am shifting from a season of disorientation into new orientation.
Being born again into newness is hard work. I am still in the process of untangling myself from the upheaval of transition and burying that which has died. I have dirt on my hands. It is tempting to long for aspects of my old life, the familiarity and predictability of it, I knew my role, and I had a sense of belonging. I have noticed myself romanticising what was and thinking that the only way forward means somehow going back. Brueggemann comments that it is not uncommon for people to be resistant to a new place and cling desperately to the old.12 I know that I must pass through this valley and be present in it, but I cannot stay here. The invitation is to keep walking. To keep moving in the direction of new life, both inwardly and outwardly. And She is alongside – tending, coaching, advocating, lamenting, illuminating, breathing – making way.
The chaos and uncertainty churned up by the pandemic ushered in a season of global disorientation. Subsequently, the landscape of our lives is changing significantly – both visibly and invisibly. For many of us, the disruption (to put it mildly) has facilitated transformation and transition on many levels.
Can you notice characteristics of orientation, disorientation, or new orientation, in your own haerenga?
The Quakers have a wise saying, “Way is closing, and Way is opening.”13 Often we discern the way forward by what is closing behind us. Where is Way closing in your life and/or where is Way opening?
How are you experiencing the sacred companionship of the Spirit amid these changes?
1 “Ruth Haley Barton | Ephesians 2:10 | 11/10/2017 - YouTube,” accessed July 27, 2020.
2 “Who Is Your Teacher?,” Dallas Willard, accessed October 22, 2020.
3 Steven Garber, Visions of Vocation: Common Grace for the Common Good (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Books, an imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2014), 11. Garber says, “The word vocation is a rich one, having to address the whole of life, the range of relationships and responsibilities. Work, yes, but also families, and neighbours, and citizenship, locally and globally – all of this and more is seen as vocation, that to which I am called as a human being, living my life before the face of God. It is never the same word as occupation, just as calling is never the same word as career. Sometimes, by grace, the words and the realities they represent do overlap, even significantly; sometimes, in the incompleteness of life in a fallen world, there is not much overlap at all.”
4 R. Ruth Barton, Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership: Seeking God in the Crucible of Ministry, Expanded edition. (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Books, an imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2018), 80.
5 Glen G. Scorgie et al., eds., Dictionary of Christian Spirituality (Grand Rapids, Mich: Zondervan, 2011), 66.
6 See 1 Corinthians 2:6-16 (NIV)
7 Barton, Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership, 80.
9 Clark H. Pinnock, Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit (Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press, 1996), 83.
9 James Bryan Smith, The Good and Beautiful Community: Following the Spirit, Extending Grace, Demonstrating Love (Great Britain: Hodder & Stoughton, 2011), 77.
10 Scorgie et al., Dictionary of Christian Spirituality, 66.
11 Brueggemann and Brueggemann, Spirituality of the Psalms, 138–140.
12 Ibid., 151–152.
13 Palmer, Let Your Life Speak, 377.
by Amanda Salmon
Amanda is currently studying towards a Graduate Diploma of Arts focusing on Christian Spirituality, and is about to embark on a new (to her) ministry role as a Chaplain in the NZ Airforce. She is an Ordained Minister with 15 years of pastoral ministry experience, 11 of those as Senior Pastor of Cornerstone Christian Church Waiuku (2008-2019). She is particularly interested in the wellbeing and soul care of leaders, having worked with women in leadership for the past 7 years. Amanda is a current participant in the Arrow Leadership NZ programme.
