on becoming me

It's hard to know who I am as a non-working person.  I've let my work define me for most of my life.  This is a spiritual challenge now--to be who I am without an institution or career defining me.  I have visions of the rest of my life whithering as I wonder where the person I was went.  And yet I am beginning to recognize that I was not fully realized in what I was doing.  To work and survive in an institution or business everyone has to engage in tasks that aren't a good fit and try to master new skills as the work requires.  I think bosses think of this as loyalty. At times this "stepping up to the opportunity" is energizing, at times distressing.  It challenges the worker to "upgrade" her/himself continually and at a continually rapid pace. I wonder though what it does to our spirits. Now I hear that as the economy shrinks and the unemployed rate grows workers who still have jobs are required to pick up more and more work of colleagues who were formerly working beside them.  Are we at such a state that to work is to be unhappily over-worked and/or anxiously grateful that you have a job, such as it is?  What happened to fulfillment and satisfaction in the workplace?

Being underemployed is giving me a opportunity to allow my values to guide my decisions and identity.  At times I am tempted to send my resume for a position that doesn't quite or at all fit my sense of myself.  I do it because of thoughts like, "It will be good practice if I get an interview" or "Maybe I can find a way to define this job as my own."  Neither of these thoughts gets me past the online application.  I am getting all kinds of email advise from the online sites where I have gone to search for position openings.  Frankly, this advise makes me feel worse because it's proposes the formulaic advise that really doesn't seem to take into account my specialty, chaplaincy.  One such emailer advised that I use fewer passive verbs such as "provided" and instead list my accomplishments.  I'm sure most employers would be impressed if I wrote in my resume that I "saved 100 souls last year" and "laid hands on and healed 20 people each month."  The trouble is I am not applying for televangelist of the year. 

I think that I shall let my values and passions be my guides.  They communicate pretty clearly who I am and the gifts I bring to the table.  I think I'll also try to cultivate some patience for the employer who will recognize and apprecisate those gifts.  In the mean times without my institutional constrictions to bind me maybe I'll discover more gifts and values of the "I AM" that I am becoming.   

Presence

The sky is a white-grey and the air is moist with cold.  It's trying to be spring outside and I sit in the sunroom where in past weeks I have been nourished and warmed by the shining sun.  Last week I worked a couple days and now I sit here wondering and waiting, "When will I work again?"  I was encouraged and felt alive working at the ministry I love--chaplaincy--last week.  I was seeing patients and families in hospitals and celebrated the feeling that I awoke the possibilities of connection and hope in the rooms I visited.  Of course every visit doesn't contain this kind of celebration.  There are the time when all I can do is sit with a family member whose loved one is seriously ill or just died and sync my breathing with theirs.  There are no words or few words.  Presence is the only message. 

It is hard to quantify this work and some people do not want to justify it as work because there is no identifiable product.  And yet I know and have experienced and know others have experienced the change that Presence elicits.  People move to a different place and space when they know they are not alone, they are connected to something larger than themselves.  They can find within themselves a courage, a purpose, a calm, whatever it is that they need in the moment when they are reminded of Presence. 

PRESNCE

I toast Presence.

"Now that seems trite!"

When as hard and harsh

life is

to raise a glass in toast

seems almost to miss 

the point.

The point

to be present to Presence

who accompanies us

to the depths of despair,

to the shores of sorrow,

to the ruins of remorse,

to the waves of worry

and back out again.

So "Here's to you, Presence!

Come woo me back to life."

You may not or you may know Presence.  I give my allegiance to the affirmation that Presence of the Universe is the matrix in which we live and move and have our being.  There isn't a thing we can do or be that doesn't have an impact on the universe in which we live and die.  That gives perspective to this time in my life when feelings of worth are hard to come by.  It makes the times between outward productivity times of thriving not just surviving. 

Hear you here next time.... 

staying salty

It has been six months since I last had full time employment and my spirit sags as I work on my taxes.  Of course my spirit would sag just working on my taxes, but this year it serves to as salt in the wound.  What does that scripture say?  That we are salt of the earth?  That we shouldn't lose our saltiness?  I don't feel to salty some days if I think of salt as an irritant in the wound.  I'm trying to focus instead on the healing powers of salt.  Did you ever gargle with salt to heal a kanker sore?  I'm trying to focus on salt as a universal equalizer making salty people those who share values and exercise common sense, as in "salt of the earth".  Like the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile un/underemployment is causing a syzemic shift in the ground beneath us and values are being tossed about and buried under the rubble of lives that we built with faith in our economic structures and systems.  The upheavel has levened us; we share a humbleness in our un/uneremployment whether we were executives, construction workers, teachers, whilte- or blue-collar workers.  The trouble, I think, is that we keep looking outside ourselves for the resources that are life giving.  Sure we need a shelter over our heads, food in our bellies and water to quench our thirst.  Those are things that sustain life.  We also need that multi-purpose saltiness to keep us from giving up on life, to keep us restructuring our value systems when they crumble, to keep us looking for our true and autherntic voice and then using it to create more life.  I know that a word of approval from my husband, an affirmation of my gifts from a colleague, an open door welcoming the things I volunteer helps me maintain my saltiness.  What does it for you?  How can you stay salty?

spirit-feeding passion

I love doing music!  I consider it a passion.  I have turned to it ever since I was young and singing my heart out in some show tune while walking down the alley behind my home (much to the neighbors' amusement) to calm my spirit and restore me to hope.  I have studied violin, tinker at piano and guitar and, now, take voice lessons and sing in two choirs.  It is practicing and doing music that is getting me through this time of waiting for gainful employment. 

I used to use music when I worked as a music therapist as a tool for reaching therapeutic goals with clients.  This was not so rewarding as you might think.  I was doing music at an elemental level and yearning for something more sublime.  Now I like the way music is in my life because through it I experience community, beauty, release of emotions and God.

We all need passions and to pursue passions in order to add value to our lives.  And when we are without "gainful employment" that added value becomes even more meaningful and important.  I might even say "essential".  Is there something that has clung to you for most of your life?  Is there some activity that engages you so that you lose track of time and are transported to a different space?  Perhaps this is your passion.  Do you recognize it for it's life-renewing potential?  Are you honoring your passion and allowing it to feed your spirit?  I hope your passion finds you and won't let you go.

anxiety and lilies

In the past I have read and offered to others for meditation the last nine chapters of the gospel of Matthew as salve for the anxious spirit.  I read it now and linger on the images of the birds of the air being fed and the lilies of the field being clothed without toiling.  This part of the biblical passage communitcates that toil does not bring food or clothing; God does.  It's this part of the passage that always takes me back to my teen years and the movie Lilies of the Field with Sidney Poitier.  It was one of my favorite movies. 

In the movie Poitier plays a drifter handyman who stops in a small town in the Arizona desert to get a drink of water from some poor German nuns.  The Mother Superior talks him into staying to fix their roof and then to built their chapel--all without any money.  What touched me in my youth and still moves me today is the relationships that develop between Homer Smith [Poitier] and the nuns, and between Homer and the Mexicans who help him make bricks for the chapel.  All of these characters in the story represent groups who have at one time or another been marginalized in our society.  And yet in these relationships they found the "food" and "clothing" and dignity that nourished life. 

If I get anxious over anything today as I look for employment it is that there will be nothing life-nourishing again.  It takes looking out my window several times a day searching for messages that can help quell my anxiety.  Today I see squirrels of different colors--brown, black, grey.  I think just maybe there is a need in the workplace for uniqueness and that maybe there can be a fit for each of us--a fit that gives us dignity in our work.

I've been reading about brain research and also a book by Edwin Friedman called   A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix.  There is agreement in all of this reading that anxiety is a function of the amygdala, also called the "reptilian" brain, that is the brain form that was developed early on in evolution and is still part of the human brain today.  Now humans have developed other parts of the brain which can function to control the automatic anxious reactions of  the amygdala and we often do control our actions by engaging our reasoning brain.  In this "age of the quick fix" I can get anxious while waiting for that right fit position [or any position?] to come along.  When it feels like all the power is in the potential employers' hands that can intensify the anxiety.  So I work at reminding myself of my uniqueness and gifts and the values I can add to any institution that is forturnate enough to hire me.  And it is work!  The good thing is that I have windows where I can watch squirrels in the winter, lilies in the summer and birds all year round. I take in the goodness of nature and it is salve for my soul. How do you deal with the anxieties of un/underemployment?  What helps you find dignity in this experience?

next blog: passions....

creating community

Unemployment wears on the spirit.  Underemployment wears on the spirit.  So I am attmepting to employ myself in creating a community among un/underemployed kindred spirits because my spirit needs companionship to navigate these troubled waters.  I believe there maybe others who could use the spiritual support of community too.

It's a curious undertaking to create community through blogging though because all of the physical reactions--nodding heads, raised eyebrows, bored looks, smiles, etc. are missing from the blog community :o.  It's thought and emotion that comes through in a blog.  I have seen people say things in email communication that they would never say to someone's face.  I suspect the same is true with blogging.  Still this is the new employment of our day.

Employers use the internet and online applications to field a pool of applicants for open positions.  Every time I fill out such an application on the web I feel like I am throwing my resume down a black hole.  Some HR departments show a little sensitivity when they send a reply indicating that they have received my application and it often includes the warning not to respond to "this email" because no one is on the other end.  Yes, successful job hunting like creating true community requires some face time : ( and that is at a premium these days.  I think the trick is to cherish the face time we do have with family and friends.  To make time with this community--family and friends--a deeper more spiritually nourishing experience. 

How does this happen, this spiritually nourishing time with family and friends?  One way it happens for me is to remember as many of the things about each relationship for which I am grateful.  A spiritual director of mine once told me that "the path to joy is gratitude".  I find that when I think of attributes of my husband, children and friends "thanks" whispers in my heart and I become hungry for more reasons to be grateful.  And now I am happily employed, at least for a while, in piling up gratitudes and my spirit takes flight for a time.  Not a bad day's work.

Next blog: dealing with anxiety...

idle hands

As a child I remember hearing sayings like, "Idle hands are the devil's play things" and "Many hands make light work."  The implied message was that if my hands weren't gainfully employed I was wasting time and headed down an irredeemable path to destruction.  So I've always worked hard against my natural inclination toward quiet and meditative endeavors to stay busy.  After many years as a local parish minister I began working hard to convince others that quiet prayer and meditation were indeed part of my work as a parish pastor.  Now that I am underemployed working about 4 days a month as a hospital chaplain I fight to keep anxiety from creeping into my quiet "unemployed" time.  I knit and type to keep my hands busy.

Being underemployed my work has become finding employment which requires much more extroversion of me.  It is tiring and tears at my spirit because it requires something that is not natural for me.  Yet I keep working at it so I can work at my passions--spiritual companionship and music.  Those sayings I heard as a child did not suggest that work could or should be enjoyable.  There was no inclusion of passions as foundation for work.  How many of those sayings and attitudes about work that we learned as we grew up are hindering how we feel about ourselves as we experience un/underemployment?