Calling and Ecstatic Experience- Vision Quest Part 2

By Janelle Esposito

As I mentioned in my prior blog, the entire reason my fast was to seek out my calling in life. I know I have a lot of options, and I don’t want to embark on just any frivolous thing I feel like doing next year. This is why my vision quest was of the utmost importance. The walk down Noland Trail was symbolic as it obviously is a pathway and I was praying to God to lead me in his direction. Nature engulfed my senses- I could smell the molding leaves, hear the squirrels scurrying through the leaves, hear a loud bird bathing itself in the clear water which reflected the colors of the trees.

Part of me was hoping that something would pop and speak to me – maybe it would be the cry of the crow I saw in Kenya, squawking in the distance, staying in its one place, wanting to move but it feeling restrained to its place for a time. As I observed it during my quiet time, I felt strangely connected to it, as if it were crying out for the very reason I was. Maybe it would be like the experience of Lame Deer who heard an actual strange, high-pitched human voice coming from the fowls, beseeching him to “make his life a worthy one.” No such ecstatic animal interaction took place that day but through dwelling in nature, leaning my back against a cool tree, absorbing rays of sunshine breaking through the trees, I felt strangely closer to God than when I lock myself up inside.

Normally when I pray for calling, I get anxious, but that day, I was in total rest. Nothing revelational occurred that day but my vision quest did not end in vain as I thought it did. Thanksgiving night after watching a movie with my parents, I felt goaded to put myself back into silent gear and sit down with my bible and pray. I felt urgent that God was about to tell something- he began to affirm me- that anything he called me to do I wouldn’t be equipped but he would equip me. I felt certain of that as I began to pray. In my bible, I incidentally got led to a passage I had never read before- Matthew 25- which spoke those who love and honor the poor love and honor God. Tears swelled up in my eyes, and after an experience I really cannot put into words, I realized that was my calling! It was nothing that really made sense. No scientific method was used. But in the past year, I had gotten a heart for social justice, but felt unworthy and unqualified and too spoiled to really go be with them. My literate culture which tells me to do things which I have already been equipped through learning to do had inhibited from this possibility. As Lame Deer had received a higher calling to go be a shaman, I had also received a calling worthy of my life. It was only really through engaging in some oral, rather than literate thinking.