call/loss

I am reading Jean Vanier's Befriending the Stranger and it is really thought-provoking. I read this bit last night:

God's call is different for each one of us
and yet it is the same.
It is a call to grow in love, in wisdom and in inner freedom,
and thus to bring greater love, peace and freedom into the word.
Once we have recognised our call and found our place --
which takes time --
then we need to learn to put down roots
and to be faithful to that call.

Each person has his/her role in building the community.
Each has to deepen his/her sense of being called.
It takes time for choices to deepen, to mature and to bear fruit.
Each call is unique
but we are all called to give life
and to give life together, as a community.

...

When we discover and welcome God's call,
something beautiful happens in us:
we experience the love of God for us
and a whole new world opens up inside us.
We also realise that it is a very demanding call.
We are invited to leave our former, familiar world,
and let go of what we used to know and hold on to;
all this implies loss.
We receive something new
but at the same time we must let go of something else.
When a woman decides to marry a man,
she is saying no to thousands of others!
When someone is called to a long-term commitment in l'Arche
that means that she has to let go of her former way of living,
the freedom to do what she wants with her day, with her friends, etc.

Grief and loss are inseparable from the call.
If we accept the call but not the loss
we will live in contradiction.

...

There is the call
but there is the loss.
But who wants the loss?
When I left the navy more than fifty years ago,
I sold everything I had,
which wasn't much, and gave it to the poor.
Today I do not have much to sell
and I doubt if anyone would want what I have!
But the call and the loss continue.
Today I am called to let go of other things: attitudes, fears,
prejudices, security, certitudes,
the need to be in control ...
There is a daily "letting go"
because each day Jesus is calling me
to become more loving, more compassionate,
more present to people,
more fully a child of God, more free from fear.

...

Let us take quiet time to listen to God's call,
To hear God call us by our name.
Let us rediscover our first love,
re-live our first call, our first "yes" to Jesus
or perhaps hear for the first time Jesus' call to follow him,
to love him,
to welcome him "into our home", into our hearts.

I scanned this leaf the other day. Man, leaves are cool.