Heaven’s Calling: One Soul’s Steep Ascent¹

This is the story of Leanne’s life and ministry. The book will be released soon (September 2008), and Leanne is grateful for all the prayers that have strengthened her during the process of writing. Her preface, which follows, explains the reason for telling her story.

Preface

Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way: walk in it.”

Isaiah 30:21

To hearken to the call of the Lord is, as Gregory of Nyssa said centuries ago, to go “from beginning to beginning, by beginnings that never cease.” Born to adversity, we are born as well to listen, to hear God calling us back to Himself, calling us to climb the steep ascent back to heaven, our home. This book is about one soul’s arduous battle to overcome her deafness, and then the learning how, through prayer, to help others overcome theirs. Though supernatural and miraculous, this is merely the living out of our baptism into Christ.

Writing the story of my life and ministry has not been easy. There have been many levels to it: the outer and the inner story; the physical, the emotional, and the spiritual all coming into play. In addition, and almost as significant, is the way the multi-faceted lives of others have impacted my own.

But more than facing a complex task, I have never wanted to write this book. I’ve long known it was required of me, for I have seen how women (and especially those who are single) who have founded Christian ministries have needed to keep the record straight by writing their own accounts. But I feared it would be an overly subjective experience of looking at my life and experiences, a consistent focusing on myself that would get most unpleasant before the long work of writing a book was finished. Instead, one surprise after another has greeted me. Before starting, I received prayer that I could focus on Christ in such a way as to be able to tell my story with true-to-reality memory. After this prayer, I felt as if the eyes of my heart were large as my chest and utterly fixed on Christ. The effect of this has been both wonderful and terrible as we review my life together! It is surely a humbling foretaste of that final day when we will once again meet all our words and deeds. And, rather than the writing involving simply a focusing on my life at different stages, or a searching to recall the past, it has turned out to be a surprising experience of descending, so to speak, back into and through the childhood years. I’ve been awed at the depth of the remembering and the vividness of emotions, feelings and seeings that are there in this reliving—and all the more grateful for the perspective and maturity the years have brought.

There have been other surprises as well. Early in the book, I had to take myself very firmly in hand lest I write a book about Mother’s life rather than my own because it is so wonderful “to rise up and call her blessed” (Proverbs 31:28). She indeed was the shining star of my early life, and my story apart from something of hers could never truly be told or understood. This is true, in lesser degrees, of others, for in John Donne’s immortal words “no man is an island”: we live not unto ourselves alone. Like everyone, my story has been uniquely impinged upon and impacted by others.

Other things I have simply hesitated to write, those which are pertinent to the story but which I have found hard to say because of family or other loyalties. We cannot, however, be understood apart from our extended (including ancestral) families: those whose very genes are passed down to us, and whose lives, for good or ill, have so impacted us that we find their expressions in our mirrors, their patterns of living showing up in our own. I’ve been surprised at the strength of my resistance to writing some few things, and am reminded again why negative patterns remain so long in families—we tend to stay in denial about them because they have never come to the light through being spoken aloud, even if only to ourselves.

It is my prayer that sharing my story will open others more fully to their own if need be, and that most especially it will strengthen many in the understanding of God’s call, His ongoing faithfulness to call us into relationship and wholeness in Himself, and thereby into His service.

I close this preface with the profound words of William Barclay, the twentieth-century Scottish theologian: “The call that comes to a Christian has a double direction. It is a calling from heaven and it is a calling to heaven. It is a voice which comes from God and calls us to God. It is a call which demands concentrated attention because of both its origin and its destination. A man cannot afford to give a disinterested glance to an invitation to God from God.”

Praise for Heaven’s Calling

“A provocative and moving spiritual autobiography that vividly portrays the ongoing struggle of a person of faith toward wholeness and healing. It poignantly shows how the author has been mightily used by the spirit of God to spearhead a ministry of renewal and celebration.”

Dr. Donald G. Bloesch,
professor of theology emeritus
University of Dubuque Theological Seminary

“I am delighted to recommend this fascinating account of an unusually interesting life. This is more than an autobiography, however. Indeed, the details of the author’s life—told with great color and conviction—serve as the opportunities to insert deeper reflections on the significance of God’s blessing on her life and ministry. I am very glad Leanne Payne did us all the kindness of writing this book. It reveals some otherwise concealed personal dimensions of her other writings. Long associated with the religious movements chronicled in this book, I particularly appreciate Leanne’s keen, critical discernment concerning their history. The richness and variety of her interests and reading is simply bewildering. For example, how many ‘renewal’ Christians have studied the works of Josef Pieper? Leanne has!”

Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon,
editor, Touchstone
author, Christ in the Psalms

“Each path to heaven is unique. Leanne Payne’s account of her journey to date relates a steep and often lonely path, full of rare terrors and beauties. Reading this rich, eye-opening memoir of pilgrimage one cannot but be grateful for the bravery and frankness of the walker, not to mention the faithful persistence of her Guide. A story of dead-ends, rabbit-trails, giddy ridges, and spectacular summits, Heaven’s Calling quickens and encourages one’s own steps along the way.”

Michael Ward,
author, Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in
the Imagination of C. S. Lewis

“To read this book by Leanne Payne is a privilege. It is, and will surely come to be widely recognized as, a major work in spiritual autobiography. This account of her life has been written and prayed through with great sensitivity and care. It is written in the light of Holy Scripture and is pervaded with the voices of the great classical Christian tradition. These voices have illuminated the depths and meaning of her life and thereby cast their light on us, the readers. While reading, we are led, nay practically compelled, to pause and reflect on our own lives in the light that comes from God in Christ. We begin to share something of the ‘Steep Ascent’ of which Leanne speaks.“

“This book is a gift that cannot be read quickly; it is far too rich, too penetrating and too provocative. In her preface Leanne expresses the hope that in reflecting upon her story and undertaking the difficult work of writing it down she will help readers to discern the calling from God and to God that pervades their stories as well. In this she surely succeeds.”

Rt. Rev. John H. Rodgers Jr., ThD.,
bishop, Anglican Mission in America, province of Rwanda

¹Leanne Payne, Heaven’s Calling: One Soul’s Steep Ascent. Used by permission of Baker Books, a division of Baker Publishing Group, copyright © 2008. All rights to this material are reserved. Materials are not to be distributed to other web locations for retrieval, published in other media, or mirrored at other sites without written permission from Baker Publishing Group.
²William Barclay, p. 28 of his commentary on Hebrews 3:1.