The late Maura O'Halloran was born in Boston, MA, and moved with her family at age five to Ireland - her father was Irish, her mother American. At age 24, she moved to Japan to train as a Zen monk in an all-male monastery. At age 27, Maura was ordained and certified as a Zen master in 1982. Three months later, she died in a vehicle accident on a trip to visit family in Ireland. Maura aspired to found a Zen monastery in Ireland. Her body was buried in Lewiston, ME. Maura is remembered as a saint in the area where she trained. Many Christians, likewise, have viewed her as somewhat of an unofficial saint. The following is from her diary, in her posthumously published memoir Pure Heart, Enlightened Mind: The Life and Letters of an Irish Zen Saint.
[T]he TV people came to film me. They were fascinated and alarmed at my room. "Aren't you afraid of ghosts?" is the universal reaction. Even educated Japanese seem to be obsessed by ghosts. They eeked and ooed and generally fussed outrageously as they lugged the camera and lights up the ladder to my loft. They were funny. I liked them but felt silly talking about myself.
"Why did you do Zen?"
I told her the story about Ciaran [an old friend who became a Buddhist monk in England]. Afterwards, thinking about the question, it seemed like something I never decided to do but something deep inside that I knew I was going to do, not with a sense of determination but in the same Way that I know Monday comes after Sunday. Inevitable.
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When reading the above from Maura's diary, the word "calling" arose to me. That word was central in my religious upbringing and the formation of my life to this day. My life has been formed around callings, especially two, at ages nine and fifteen.
Being in a religious sect where the Christian Bible - Old and New Testaments - was central shaped my awareness of calling as something God gave me. I was taught every Christian had at least one calling to fulfill on this earth. We could call this a divine mandate to a work, often called a vocation, to serve others as a representative of Christ.
Accepting Jesus as one's Savior was also seen as a calling. This was the foundational vocation - to devote one's life to following Christ. Accepting this calling was the initiation into the Christian faith.
In my family's religious sect, as in most Christian ones, if not all, one did not initiate a calling. The calling is something given to you. You can accept or not, but it is given, not gotten. We would not baptize children, believing baptism should only occur after having received the calling to follow Christ. Baptism was a sign and confirmation of this change of heart, often called being born again, being saved, or accepting Jesus into your heart. How, we opined, does a baby consciously respond to a calling? They cannot, we concluded. Hence, the foundational calling came after the person reached what we called the age of accountability - one would be accountable for one's choices.
There are many callings in the Bible story. Ancestors, like Abraham received a calling. Callings came to prophets (lit., those who speak forth), kings, Jesus' first students (often referred to as disciples), to apostles (lit., ones sent, sent forth, sent out) who first post-Jesus spread the Jesus message, etc. Early Christians, additionally, agreed that the entrance into the Way (Christians were first called "people of the Way," not Christians) was through receiving a calling through the holy Spirit.
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Maura was from a Christian background. Her prior experience possibly prepared her to sense that her choice of Zen was chosen for her. That is, in a calling, one's choice to say "yes" is to a "yes" given. The sense is of something coming from outside us, placed upon us, like a sacred destiny to a particular living out of the reality of the dimension from which the calling arose to us.
I value how Maura experienced her calling as something that felt ordinary to her: "the same Way that I know Monday comes after Sunday." My early callings were unlike each other. Like some in the Bible, the first was a sudden, overpowering, and profoundly moving breakthrough. The second was more subtle and lingered for weeks before I responded with a "yes."
Many years after those initial callings and some since, I agree entirely with Maura's experience. Her words resonate with my heart. We are here to better this world through serving others. We find different paths, and the callings we receive are shaped by the path we walk.
Possibly, you can look over your life and see how you have followed a calling that subtly or not-subtly arose. Sometimes, we look back, I think, and see we were called to a particular path or vocation only after living it for sometime, possibly for many years.
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One key to living a calling is that it offers us a perspective not of ourselves. That is, we realize that what we are doing is given to us from another realm - divinely given, if you will, or God-given - and we are given it to better the world we live in now. A calling always leads to accountability to serve others. There is no private calling.
The callings upon my life have been sustained, and through some trying times when I could have given up, partly through knowing they were Spirit-given and that I wanted to be faithful to the One who called me. I have repeatedly experienced that whatever the calling entailed, I was not alone and was divinely endowed with the grace and graces to fulfill it.
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*(C) Brian K. Wilcox, 2023. Permission is given to use photographs and writings with credit given to the copyright owner.
*Brian's book is An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love. The book is a collection of poems Brian wrote based on wisdom traditions, predominantly Christian, Buddhist, and Sufi, with extensive notes on the poetry's teachings and imagery.
