In September I traveled to Phoenix, Arizona, to be with my father as he faced surgery to address a growing problem with massive internal bleeding.\u00a0 Now, after a fairly torturous process he is recuperating in a rehabilitation center and, all being well, he will go back to his small home in Mesa at the end of the month.\u00a0 He is 85.<\/p>\n
For most of his life my father worked as a sales engineer.\u00a0 He both designed and sold conveyer systems for a wide-ranging list of clients, including General Electric, White Motor, and Jack Daniels Distilleries.\u00a0 He sold equipment for a variety of materials handling firms; and late in his career he went into business for himself.\u00a0 When he did, my mother joined him in his efforts, handling most of the responsibilities that might have been addressed by an administrative assistant, and it was only my mother\u2019s death some 10 years ago that prompted him to finally retire.<\/p>\n
Toward the end of his work life, however, the inevitable changes in the industry itself began to take its toll.\u00a0 My father had a steady hand, a good eye, and even something of an artistic bent (in the way, of course that engineers are artistic) and, by all accounts he was a skilled draftsman.\u00a0 He also possessed a certain public ease with people, a gift for gab, and he reveled in the adventures of traveling.\u00a0 But as engineering moved from the draft board to the computer screen, he lost touch with the leading edge of the technology in his field and he also lost the ability to produce the kind of product that industries had come to expect.<\/p>\n
I have had a considerable amount of time to reflect on his life \u2014 some of it spent in an intensive care unit, watching him draw on the interpersonal skills that he still possesses to navigate the vagaries of aging and health care.\u00a0 He is no Moses, of course, but like Moses he is now staring across to the Promised Land; and Moses, like my father, had a pretty daunting sales cycle on his hands for the better part of forty years.<\/p>\n
Among other things I have found myself asking a long list of interrelated questions:<\/p>\n
That is, I confess, a difficult contemplation.\u00a0 It is difficult in part because there is no objective answer to those questions; difficult in part because even now my father lacks a vocabulary to offer his own evaluation; and difficult for me because I lack objectivity about my father.<\/p>\n
But life is art.\u00a0 So there is some virtue in acknowledging that lack of objectivity and then asking, \u201cWhat can we learn?\u201d\u00a0 The substance of what I have to share with you today comes from that admittedly subjective, but \u2014 I hope \u2014 helpful place and from years of working with women and men like my father who are engaged in the business world.<\/p>\n
It is also shaped by my reflections on both the church and the academy which are \u2014 for better or worse \u2014 not so very different from the business world than some imagine. As one who has worked for years in two worlds that some argue are not all that real, I must say I have often wished that they were less \u201creal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Allow me, then, to make five observations that arise out of that reflection.\u00a0 Each, I hope, will be something of a stimulus for further conversation and are offered as descriptions of the way forward in our quest to discover the spiritual dimension of our work world.<\/p>\n
First, <\/em>live from a \u201cbecause,\u201d not an although.<\/em><\/p>\n In the July-August edition of the Harvard Business Review <\/em>the editors featured an article by HBS Professor Clay Christensen.\u00a0 Entitled \u201cHow will you measure your life?\u201d the article was something of a phenomenon.\u00a0 Hundreds of thousands went on line to read the article and journalists around the world picked up on themes from it, including David Brooks, who writes for the New York Times. <\/em><\/p>\n The editorial staff of HBR <\/em>was so taken with the response that they chose to leave the article on their website through the month of October.\u00a0 They went on to observe that since his article was published Professor Christensen has faced even bigger challenges than those posed by the world of commerce.\u00a0 He was diagnosed as having follicular lymphoma and, a short time later, suffered an ischemic stroke.<\/p>\n What struck me was the way in which the editor introduced the on-line version of the article.\u00a0 He observed, \u201cThough Christensen\u2019s thinking comes from his deep religious faith, we believe that these are strategies anyone can use.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n The \u201cthough\u201d or \u201calthough\u201d in that sentence is something that I often hear when people talk about religious convictions and it could and often does mean a lot of things:<\/p>\n But it can also mean:<\/p>\n In all fairness to the editorial staff at HBR, <\/em>I have no idea how many of those implied meanings might have been hiding behind the language.\u00a0 But there are other times when I have no doubt that what people mean is, \u201cAlthough it\u2019s religious, it\u2019s still helpful.\u201d<\/p>\n The problem with this language is that \u201calthough\u201d is not the same thing as \u201cbecause.\u201d\u00a0 When people like Professor Christensen write out a deep faith, they arrived there \u201cbecause\u201d of their convictions, not in spite of them.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know him, but I suspect that is also what sustains him in these days of recovery.<\/p>\n There is wisdom to be had from religious convictions that cannot be achieved by any other means.\u00a0 Believing something about the existence and nature of God \u2014 and with it, a number of other things about the nature and purpose of human life \u2014 profoundly re-shapes the way in which we see the world.\u00a0 It isn\u2019t a disposable vehicle for achieving insights that can be had some other way.\u00a0 There are times when you are either religious or you aren\u2019t, and you get it or you don\u2019t.<\/p>\n My first bit of advice, then, is don\u2019t be pressured into living without a \u201cbecause.\u201d\u00a0 You arrived where you are today not in spite of your spiritual commitments, but because of them.\u00a0 Don\u2019t be bullied into living without a because by a culture that doesn\u2019t \u201cget it.\u201d\u00a0 Being committed to a particular understanding of God is not, by definition, intolerant.\u00a0 It is about a path and a vocabulary that gives spirituality traction in your life.<\/p>\n Second, don\u2019t confuse your job with your vocation.<\/em><\/p>\n We live in a culture defined by doing and there is much to commend that approach to life.\u00a0 It has created a country and an economy that has not only benefited our own nation, but many others as well.\u00a0 The downside is that when we are done doing, we are often \u201cdone\u201d in every sense of the word. \u00a0Our mindset was captured well by one columnist who recently wrote about extending retirement ages.\u00a0 She asked, \u201cWill Americans turn French or just work longer?\u201d \u00a0That is certainly one way of construing the choice, but, ideally, there should be an alternative to working longer, never mind turning French.<\/p>\n That is where distinguishing between our life\u2019s vocation and the job we currently hold becomes important.\u00a0 Vocation, from the Latin, vocare, <\/em>is about the call of God on our lives \u2014 it touches on the way we are in the world, our sensibilities, skills, personality, values, strengths, and gifts.\u00a0 It is not about credentialing or employment.\u00a0 It is about becoming and being.<\/p>\n The words healer, builder, evangelist, teacher, and guide are better descriptors of vocation better, for example, than are the titles, neurosurgeon, subcontractor, salesperson, assistant professor, and consultant.\u00a0 But even those words fail to capture the individual and biographical dimensions of a vocation.<\/p>\n Vocations are shaped over a lifetime and are the tapestry that is a lifetime of experiences.\u00a0 Jobs are imperfect vehicles and rarely coincide completely with God\u2019s calling on our lives.\u00a0 It is worth asking how well \u201cwhat we are doing\u201d speaks to \u201cwhat we are becoming\u201d and that effort may help to shape our priorities.\u00a0 It may even assist us in finding the job within the job that feeds and nurtures our vocation.\u00a0 But, whatever the result it is a rare thing to find ourselves in a place where we can risk assuming that our jobs and vocations are one in the same.<\/p>\n Third, build a life, not just a business.<\/em><\/p>\n The best of both therapists and spiritual directors believe in the power of story.\u00a0 It is not the conceptual that typically changes life.\u00a0 It is the ability to tell your story and then imagine what the next chapter will be.<\/p>\n Storytelling of this kind captures the imagination in ways that the conceptual often fails to do.\u00a0 More importantly, telling our stories increases our own sense of ownership and responsibility.<\/p>\n After having stood at the deathbed of more than one relative, friend, and parishioner, I confess to you the thing I struggle with the most is the sense that far too many people approach the final chapters of their lives with little or no idea how their work lives fit into those final moments.<\/p>\n So much of what we do is spent under various guises, that in those final moments, I\u2019ve concluded that the most terrifying dimension of it all must be not the task of laying it all down, but of knowing what so much of it might have meant.<\/p>\n A friend of mine who died a few years ago now from an aggressive and unrelenting cancer, served for a number of years as a prosecuting attorney.\u00a0 Before he died, he observed:\u00a0 \u201cI have a language for judges, another for those who are incarcerated, a third language for those who serve as defense attorneys, and a fourth language for my family and friends.\u00a0 For some time, I convinced myself that I was translating what I had to say for people who spoke different languages.\u00a0 But the content was different and I was a different person, with different values in each case.\u00a0 I no longer know who I am, or what I stand for.\u201d<\/p>\n Fourth, don\u2019t check your values at the door and don\u2019t stop checking your values. <\/em><\/p>\n Some years ago I assumed a leadership role in a foreign country and, among the reporting relationships that I had, I reported directly to a foreign national.<\/p>\n A month into my responsibilities, I discovered that a support organization affiliated with the institution that I served was running a pass-through account.\u00a0 Approximately three quarters of a million dollars \u201cpassed through\u201d that account and I made immediate arrangements to have it closed.<\/p>\n I have no doubt that the decision to close the account finally cost me the position.\u00a0 I also have no doubt that it was the right decision.\u00a0 Sooner or later, in ways large and small, everyone faces the challenge of living from \u201cthe because\u201d that has shaped their lives.<\/p>\n Unless that \u201cbecause\u201d is a weak and calculated choice, it will require us to take our values into the work that we do and we will be required by our work to reexamine our values.<\/p>\n Fifth, refuse to live from fear.<\/em><\/p>\n If fear is the antithesis of faith, then courage is not bravado, it is the capacity to act faithfully, whatever the circumstances.\u00a0 During the economic downturn I have found myself in consultations with publishers, seminaries, and parishes about the way forward and it is striking how many are making fear-based decisions.<\/p>\n Property sales and retrenchment have been the first things many of them have considered and those choices have been made without regard for the way in which such decisions will forever reduce the footprint and significance of their work. \u00a0They have sold property in cities like Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco where they are landlocked and have no hope of ever repurchasing the kind of property that other generations have entrusted to their care.<\/p>\n The problem here is not simply strategic.\u00a0 It also represents a lack of courage and commitment or, as Edwin Friedman puts it, \u201ca failure of nerve in the age of the quick fix.\u201d\u00a0 Fear is not our friend.<\/p>\n St. Gregory\u2019s Abbey in Shawnee, Oklahoma, where I take a group of students on an annual basis is a sharp contrast with fearful decision-making.\u00a0 Monasticism has faced hard times for a long time now.\u00a0 New vocations, especially here in the United States, have been on the decline for decades and St. Gregory\u2019s has watched its numbers decline and the average age of its community rise.<\/p>\n In spite of those realities, they are now installing an elevator as the prelude to building a new retreat center.\u00a0 My students immediately wanted to know why they are doing this, granted the probable future of monastic vocations.\u00a0 The answer the community gives is instructive: This is our mission, to draw others into the life of prayer and to spread the grace of God.\u00a0 We may or may not survive, but we cannot fail to do what we have been called to do.<\/p>\n Perhaps it is this radical conviction that shapes a life from start to finish and provides an answer to at least some of the questions I began to surface sitting in my father\u2019s hospital room.\u00a0 Life is filled with unanticipated challenges \u2014 each of them with their own significance in the moment \u2014 significance that weighs heavily on us.\u00a0 But the lasting significance of both the first and the last sale lies in the way we respond to God\u2019s invitation.<\/p>\n Moses must have felt that way as he stared into the Promised Land, whose borders he had walked for forty years, but never crossed.\u00a0 Keenly aware of the contingencies that they will continue to face, Moses does not rehearse the dangers, but instead reminds the children of Israel of the importance of Torah.\u00a0\u00a0 It is he says, \u201cnot a trifling thing for you, it is your very life.\u201d[1]<\/a><\/p>\n In September I traveled to Phoenix, Arizona, to be with my father as he faced surgery to address a growing problem with massive internal bleeding.\u00a0 Now, after a fairly torturous process he is recuperating in a rehabilitation center and, all being well, he will go back to his small home in Mesa at the end […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":240,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-work"],"yoast_head":"\n\n
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[1]<\/a> Deuteronomy 32:47.\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"