83 - the Sacred Task

There is a peculiar danger that accompanies the passing of time. We become accustomed to our circumstances. The extraordinary becomes ordinary, the difficult becomes routine, and the dreams that once seemed urgent can quietly be postponed until tomorrow. Yet tomorrow has a habit of becoming next year, and next year eventually becomes the remainder of a life.

The Fifth Keystone therefore calls us to something both simple and demanding: Seek and follow your calling in life.

Life is too short to surrender our deepest aspirations to convenience. A calling need not be grand, nor must every dream become a profession or public achievement. It may be found in raising a family, building something with one's hands, teaching others, creating art, pursuing knowledge, serving a community, or becoming exceptionally good at something that brings meaning to one's existence. What matters is that we actively seek the pursuits that make our lives worthy of the time entrusted to us.

Our calling is sacred, and the sacred is significant because it disrupts the profane. It interrupts the ordinary pattern of our days and reminds us that life contains purposes greater than comfort and consumption. The sacred asks us to stop, look upward, and remember that we are not merely here to pass the time.

This is particularly important in an age of abundance. Those who came before us often struggled against scarcity, uncertainty, disease, fear and faithlessness. Their lives demanded that they seek something beyond themselves, something that could sustain hope when the world offered little else. Where those who came before us battled drought, fear and death to find the Paraclete, so must we battle excess and the temptation of abundance.

Our struggle is different, but it is no less real.

We are surrounded by distractions designed to consume our attention. There is always another purchase to make, another screen to watch, another convenience to enjoy, another reason to postpone the difficult work of becoming who we wish to be. Abundance can free us from suffering, but it can also free us from urgency. When nearly everything is available, it becomes remarkably easy to pursue nothing.

The answer is not to reject comfort or deliberately make life miserable. Rather, we should use the freedom that abundance provides to pursue something worthwhile. If we have been given time, let us spend some of it creating. If we have resources, let us use them to build. If we possess knowledge, let us share it. If we have discovered a calling, let us follow it.

And if we have lost sight of that calling, let us begin searching again.

This pursuit is not merely individual. The Temple itself has a calling. The task entrusted to the Temple Elders is not simply to preserve what has already been built, but to continue building: to grow our community, welcome new Members, strengthen the bonds between those already within it, and seek additional locations where our broader family can gather.

The Temple in the City is well underway, and it represents an important step in that work. But one Temple cannot be the final destination. Our community extends beyond one neighborhood, one city, or even one country. More sacred destinations will galvanize our faith and provide a lodestar to all of you, along with allowing Members around the world to gather together in person, share their knowledge, practice our shared faith of Paraclism, and build the relationships upon which a living spiritual community depends.

The calling of the Temple is therefore much like the calling of the individual. It requires vision, effort, patience, and persistence. We must be willing to imagine what does not yet exist and then undertake the work necessary to bring it into existence.

The arrival of another season is an invitation to renewal. Ask yourself what you have been postponing. What have you always wanted to learn? What work have you always wanted to attempt? Which dream has survived despite years of neglect? What would you regret never having tried?

There is still time.

The Fifth Keystone does not promise that following one's calling will be easy. It promises something more valuable: that the pursuit itself can give direction to our lives. We are not guaranteed success, recognition, or even completion. But we can choose to move deliberately toward the things that matter.

Life is brief. Let us therefore spend it in pursuit of something worthy — and let us build, together, the places and communities that will allow those worthy pursuits to endure beyond our own brief lives.