About the Blog.....Transitions

Apologies to those of you who have checked periodically and have not found any fresh posts since before Christmas. That is about to change.

Many of you already know that the central Cardoner Office is closing up shop June 30, 2008. The past couple of months have been associated with much transition for our staff, personally and professionally. We stopped posting in part because we were unsure if blogging was the best use of our time during this final six months. We also found it increasingly difficult to blog about Cardoner's vocation themes when so much about our own vocational journies have been so precarious.

But, after much time and reflection, we have decided to start blogging again - and to re-dedicate our blog to transitions. I met with a senior recently who told me that for lent she had given up worrying about what she would do after graduation. How similar is her lenten desire with mine! We are both in transition - no longer fully connected to Creighton and yet nowhere else to start to connect to post-Creighton. Neither of us knows where we will be after our time at Creighton ends. Both of us too are trying to be intentional and to let God draw us ever closer to Him during this tumultuous time.

The thought occured to me that perhaps a blog about transitions might be helpful to more than just this senior and myself. I talked with a faculty colleagues on the phone yesterday who just decided not to return to teaching next year - has already given her notice. She too is facing enormous transitions. Then there are a couple of colleagues I know who are grieving the recent loss of a parent. Transitions. There there is the daughter of a Creighton faculty member whose cancer has re-appeared. Transitions.

It goes on and on really. Most of us, to a greater or lesser degree, feel we are in the midst of a transition of one sort or another. For those of you who feel this more acutely right now, this blog is dedicated to you. We hope that as we try to reflect on the intersection of vocation with transition this next few months, you might find something that resonates with you. As St. Ignatius says in the Spiritual Exercises, take what is useful for you and leave behind whatever hinders your journey!

Glimpses

Advent is the season of longing – of recognizing the ways in which our lives are not complete and making room for the one who can complete us. Maybe God works these longings into our lives more acutely during the holiday season. If God made humans to be restless and to long for a completeness not known during our earthly lives (as Scripture and tradition have always suggested), then maybe God also initiates this restlessness and longing more now en masse than at any other time of the year. This week, this Advent, I am recognizing that God initiates the longings I experience. And he initiates this longing through glimpses.

There were moments on my 30-day retreat of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius where I glimpsed fullness of life with God. At times, I felt immersed with God, completely connected with him. I glimpsed God’s overwhelming love for me exactly as I am. I glimpsed God’s delight in all of creation, including me. I glimpsed total love, peace, harmony, fulfillment. I say I glimpsed these things not because they were superficial – no, my experiences have (hopefully) sunk deep into the marrow of my bones. Instead, I say I glimpsed life with God because even as I felt God with me, I knew I experienced only a small sliver of who God is and also a sliver of life that will come for me when I die and become forever joined with him.

I’ve been back from my retreat longer now than the entire retreat lasted. While I still feel moments of God’s overwhelming love for me, these moments are becoming less intense and less frequent. Given this, I realized this past week that I am grieving. I am grieving the strong connection I felt with God during my retreat. I long to feel that which I felt/glimpsed during my retreat. But, I also see that if God had not given me glimpses of loving connection with him, I would not notice its absence now. I would not yearn for it so deeply now. By giving me glimpses of a better life, God opens me to imagine, to desire more.

These glimpses of a better life fuel our desires, fuel our vocation, fuel our longings. We can imagine life where young men do not go into shopping malls and shoot people. We can imagine life where we get along peacefully with family. We can imagine better friendships, better romantic relationships, better jobs, better grades. At the very least, we can imagine life where the gifts we want to buy are affordable, stocked on the shelves and available in stores without long check-out lines. Why? We so easily imagine these things because God gives us glimpses of these things in our daily life – moments when we feel peace with family, moments when our jobs or classes are going perfectly, moments when we feel alive and well and right with the world.

In the past I thought I originated my longings, authored my desires. This Advent I am learning firsthand how God gives me both the glimpses of fullness I experience as well as the longings for more. God gives me the glimpses and the longings. Alpha and omega. Beginning and end.

Opening the Door

While “training” is over—I swore in as a Volunteer May 21^st and left for my site—my learning and discovery has just begun. I had to settle into my site, get to know my host family, find my own house, buy furniture and things for my house, keep learning the language (and the dialect specific to my community), and figure out my role here as a Volunteer.

I began my in-country posts trying to structure them around my three months of training. I assumed I would be writing more during PST. I did write periodically about my life here in general at my personal blog: http://radicaljosh.blogspot.com. Part of the reason I didn’t write is I have no regular access to the internet and the time I do have is spent on Peace Corps work and politics and keeping in touch with my friends and family.

Yet, these ten months and six months of actual service have been a journey to say the least. Have I been doing “work”? Yes. But you ask that question to any currently serving Volunteer and you’ll get varying degrees of the same tentative “well, yes…sort of”.

Ourselves, work, and our relations to that work are the all-consuming issues we face out here. During training we are bombarded with what we will be doing; how to do our job; what will go wrong; how horrible we will feel at times; how great we will feel at times; and how to handle isolation, loneliness, slow work progress, fatigue, and thoughts of Early-Termination. Then we head to our sites and have to live and work and get rid of our expectations.

With five hours a day language sessions; technical training on how to build latrines, work on family planning, talk about HIV/AIDS, etc; learning about Arab and Berber culture; being told how to not offend people; and how to live successful as an American in rural Morocco, we felt that we were learning how to adjust to the Moroccans we would live with. We felt that our journey of self-discovery would start when we became members of the community. We are all people who value diversity and culture, after all. We have adjusted our mindset to living here; we are ready to be changed! It is true that living and working with the Berbers for two years will be a journey of self-discovery, but really the journey began when we arrived at our site and sat in our homes for six months alone, scared, apprehensive, nervous, and worried. We slowly learned that before we can do our job we must first develop ourselves.

This time here as made me realize that before I can go out and experience life with the Berbers and allow this experience to change me, I first have to change enough to not be afraid to live, not just stay, in my village.

Relationship with ourselves and with God is one of the components of developing vocation. I must figure that out before I can have a relationship with a community and properly navigate the tension of sacrifice and fulfillment. As I constantly worry about if I am doing and working “enough”, as I complain and cry about my site and my role here, I start to realize I need to understand myself and who I am before I can even, literally, walk out the door. Such is true in America: we are always apprehensive of going out in the world and the community—more so when we are unsure about what we will be doing there. As the year approaches its end and I slowly gain confidence with walking around my community, I realize that before I can begin my vocation journey, before I can even being to be changed by this experience, I need to come to terms with my own fears and issues of “self-worth” so I can open my door.

Live Life for Your Passions

Live life for passion. If the passion is a hobby, your job, your family, or all three. Or something completely different. It doesn’t matter. As long as you have something in life that excites you, makes you and others happy, and is worthwhile, then you have all you need. This word passion should not be thrown around lightly. People can have many hobbies, foods they like, and organizations they support. This doesn’t mean they are all passions. A passion in my opinion is distinguished from a simple hobby in that you could really do without certain hobbies and be ok. If a passion was taken away, on the other hand, your life would be irrevocably altered for the worse. A piece of your identity would be gone.

Take one of my passions: music. If I were not able to play the saxophone ever again, I would be saddened. If I couldn’t compose music I’d be devastated. If I couldn’t listen to music, I’d go nuts. Music is a part of who I am. It is a crucial aspect of my identity. I need it for creative expression, for emotional release, for listening enjoyment, the list goes on. It is not just something I do or enjoy. One statement that I feel is true about myself is, “I am a musician”. Is a passion the same thing as a calling? I think it can be. I am called to music in many ways. I don’t feel the need to make it my career and that demonstrates how one’s calling doesn’t have to be their career.

I am envious of those people who are talented enough to make music their career. My idol John Williams, for example. To be able to compose the music that millions of people around the world can hear and automatically remember the movies the music came from…that would be sweet. John Williams wrote the music for Star Wars, Jurassic Park, E.T., Harry Potter, Jaws, and Indiana Jones just to name a few of the most popular. I am certainly envious of his ability. But, I don’t beat myself up over it because I get incredible joy from listening, creating, and performing music even if it is just me, myself, and I who hears it.

As Omaha deals with the tragedy of the Westroads Mall shootings, let us keep in our thoughts and prayers those people who died and the people who mourn them. But let this also be a reminder to us all that life is precious. If we are not living for our passions then we need to straighten out our priorities. In this season of giving, may we also use our passions in a way that contributes to the good of our families, friends, and community. If we are passionate about music, may that come out in a giving way this season. Maybe that is something as simple as caroling for the homebound or folks at a nursing home. It may not be easy to do, but why not use our passions for not only our own happiness, but the happiness of others as well? That is what this season should be about.