Prophets and Sycamore Trees

Finding a ministry in unexpected places

“I am no prophet, nor a prophet’s son;
but I am a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore trees….”

That’s a line from Scripture, from a lesson read in many Christian congregations this past Sunday. It’s from the Hebrew prophet Amos and reminds me, every time I read it, of a title of a book called A Dresser of Sycamore Trees—The Finding of a Ministry. (Note: it’s important to think of the Hebrew prophets not so much as fortune-tellers, but the wisest ones who call God’s people back to their purpose. They often tell the people of the consequences of disobeying God.)

The book, written by a man named Garret Keizer, who was at the time the lay vicar of a small Episcopal Church parish, in a tiny town, in the far northern reaches of Vermont. Like Amos, Keizer was sometimes reluctant to accept God’s call. Honestly, anyone who accepts a “call” should be discerning: the responsibly is great.

I read the book when I was considering ordination back in 1997 and have returned to it several times over the years as I have discerned changes and transitions in my own ministry.

Keizer left northern New Jersey and went to the faraway land of northern Vermont. In the normal routines of his life in that close-knit community, he discovered his ministry. Not to the ministry that he had imagined, but instead something much deeper, more personal and interpersonal. Much more enduring. More difficult and more rewarding and more full of love than he could have ever imagined.

In the communities that I’ve served as both a layperson and a priest, and now with Ligare, I have found that it to be true as well. When we are open to the movement of the Spirit, we find ourselves in unexpected places and exactly where we need to be, even if for a season or two.

I believe we both individually and as communities are called to discover and rediscover our ministries in both the mundane and the cataclysmic. I have discovered mine at Ligare in the day-to-day work of talking with people interested in the intersection of psychedelics and their faith journeys, working with others to develop meaningful resources, and providing spaces for people to be curious and honest. I have also discovered it in the misunderstandings, controversies and mischaracterizations that others have projected onto it and me. Ministry out on the frontiers of church and culture is rarely easy.

Ligare is a prophetic ministry, not because its leaders and members are necessarily prophets ourselves, but because as a group we are inviting the institutional Church and individual seekers to new and unexpected places. To take seriously the call to be agents of God’s healing grace, to taking seriously the spiritual, emotional, and physical healing that mindful work with psychedelics can occasion, to share the deep and powerful spiritual resources of our modern/ancient tradition.

We and our institutions need healing and new dreams and visions. May we who follow in the Way of Jesus have the vision, the strength and courage to claim our prophetic work, to be the people we are called to be: authentic in our work, healers, bearers of the Light, and advocates for the weak, the sick, the marginalized.