Hilary Moon Murphy

Still Struggling

In my last journal entry, I had the hubris to mention that I thought that I had been given a leading -- a moment where I had been touched by God and told to change my life. Okay, I've been touched by God. So now what?

The fact is, I really don't want to change anything. My life is good now. I want to just write stories and sell them and be a good librarian and have a happy family. I don't want to devote my time to taking on the cause of peace -- a cause that sometimes seems pretty hopeless.

"You could just walk away from this leading," Ganpati-Baba tells me.

"Walk away? How the heck do I walk away from the voice of God?"

Ganpati raises one of his expressive eyebrows and looks at me. "Pretend it just didn't happen. People do it all the time. They receive a call to a higher purpose, and they rationalize it away. 'I don't need to do anything. My life is too busy now. Let someone else do it.' Eventually, the call goes away and they can return to their normal activities. The activities that are so much more important than the call of God."

"That's not fair. It's not that I'm saying that my activities are more important than the call of God, it's just that..."

"Yes?" Ganpati crosses his arms and waits.

"Damn," I say. "That's exactly what I was saying, wasn't it?"

Ganpati shrugs.

"What happens to them?" I ask.

"What happens to who?"

"The ones who walk away. What happens to them?"

"Nothing happens," Ganpati says. "You all have free will -- destiny is not preordained, it is chosen. If you choose to do nothing meaningful with your life, that is your privelege. My question for you, Hilary, is what do you want? What do you want to do with this beautiful life that you have been given? Do you want to go through the motions, or do you want to make a difference?"

"I don't know! I don't even know why I'm talking to you about this. Why am I asking a Hindu deity to interpret this for me?"

Ganpati sits and thinks for a while. "I wish I could tell you the answer to that. You think I am less scary than your own God, which is utter foolishness. My voice is just the one to which you have chosen to listen."

I open my mouth, but he holds up a hand to forestall me.

"Listen. The divine is simply a higher purpose that motivates you to make something more of yourself than you are. It makes no difference whether you are Christian or Hindu. Everyone receives leadings. Some recognize them for what they are, and ignore them. Some don't believe in any sort of God, but receive leadings and act on them anyway. They may call it different things -- a crisis of conscience or a change of heart -- but they wake up one day different than the way they were before. They realize they have to do something."

"Okay, you are right," I admit. "I have to do something. I look at my daughter and I think about all those other children out there -- the ones who are dying in Afghanistan and Iraq while I have my comfortable life. But I don't understand what I've been called to do. Why didn't this leading come in clearer?"

Ganpati-Baba's eyes narrow as he looks at me. "There are a hundred small things you can do to start improving the world. Write a letter to your political leaders. Join the American Friends Service Committee. Volunteer somewhere. Follow your heart, and choose!"

Then his voice went soft. "If you want to wash yourself of responsibility, go do it now. Walk away. Don't turn on news programs, where you might have to be informed of what is happening elsewhere in the world. Close your eyes. Turn away from the pain and suffering that is out there. But do not come whining to me about how horrible the world is, if you are unwilling to go out there and change it! Do not say that you are a pacifist if all you are is a coward."

He's gone now. The room is cold and empty, like my faithless heart. I still have not chosen what to do.

Hmm