"Stop wearing out your shoes," Jeremiah said (Jeremiah 2:25), and we all stood up straight. This was something a crusty desert father might have said to a recalcitrant young monk who thought that some other monastery might suit him better, or whose restlessness was preventing prayer: get hold of yourself, settle down. Stop wearing out your shoes. Good advice for us in America, in a society grown alarmingly mobile, where retreats and spirituality workshops have become such a hot consumer item one wonders if seeking the holy has become an end in itself.

The prophet, after all, is witness to a time in which his world, the society surrounding the temple in Jerusalem, meets a violent end, and Israel is taken captive to Babylon. Hearing Jeremiah's words every morning, I soon felt challenged to reflect on the upheavels in our own society, and in my life. A prophet's task is to reveal the fault line hidden beneath the comfortable surface of the worlds we invent for ourselves, the national myths as well as the little lies and delusions of control and security that get us through the day. And Jeremiah does this better than anyone.

...Jeremiah reminded me that the pain that comes from one's identity, that grows out of the response to a call, can't be escaped or pushed aside. It must be gone through. He led me into the heart of pain, forcing me to recognize that to answer a call as a prophet, or a poet for that matter, is to reject authority of credentials, of human valuation of any kind, accepting only the authority of the call itself.