The First Week
Well, the first week of the new job is over. It was a very good week. Each day got better. Each day I got deeper into the work that I am to be doing. It feels good. Now, I don't want you to get the idea that I am saying that life is better than being in the church. It is different. That's all. For this point in my life and pilgrimage, it is where I am supposed to be. I have no pie-in-the-sky view that any calling is any easier/better/more holy/more important than any other. It just feels good to be doing something that at this moment matches the calling I have. As the writer Frederick Buechner has said in defining work:

There are all different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God rather than that of society, say, or the super-ego, or self-interest. By and large a good rule for finding out is this: the kind of work God usually calls you to do is the kind of work (a) that you most need to do and (b) the world most needs to be done. If you really get a kick out of your work, you've presumably met requirement (a), but if your work is writing TV deodorant commercials, the chances are you've missed requirement (b). On the other hand, if your work is in a leper colony, you have probably met (b), but if most of the time you're bored and depressed by it, the chances are you haven't only bypassed (a) but probably aren't helping your patients much either. Neither the hair shirt nor the soft birth will do. The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet. -- Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking – A Theological ABC

There is no doubt that my gladness touches a deep need- addiction and alcohol and drug abuse among youth.

It Is a Calling to Healing
Henri Nouwen has been, no surprise, the inspiration of much in the healing ministries. His Wounded Healer nearly 40 years ago explained the Christian paradigm that Jesus so humbly and powerfully lived. It is out of our woundedness that we can be of the most and greatest help to others who are wounded. It is not in our strength, but in our weakness that we find healing for ourselves and the leading to work with the healing of others. But Nouwen wrote about it in other places as well. As I begin this new healing work of healing amidst addiction with youth in the schools I found the following that gives some of the ways it works:

...healing means, first of all, the creation of an empty but friendly space where those who suffer can tell their story to someone who can listen with real attention.

Our most important question as healers is not, "What to say or to do?" but, "How to develop enough inner space where the story can be received?" Healing is the humble but also very demanding task of creating and offering a friendly empty space where strangers can reflect on their pain and suffering without fear, and find the confidence that makes them look for new ways right in the center of their confusion. --Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life, pages 67, 68.