In many ways, I feel as if I'm making a lot of progress in my journey into the unknown that calls to me with promises of knowledge and fulfillment. I'm spending a lot more time engaging in spiritual pursuits, making time for a number of groups and classes, and trying to make more of an effort to truly live a spiritual life and transform myself. I know such personal metamorphosis is possible. I know people who have, or are at least in the process of doing so. I'd say Fr. Michael is one example. Many of the Buddhist monks I know are, too.
Today, for instance, I attended a workshop by Fr. Bob Cary on 'work as an act of faith,' which I thought would be helpful since I really struggle with being happy doing what I do for a living. One of the first things I realized during the workshop is that I tend to treat my faith/spiritual practice, my work life, and my personal/home life as separate spheres when I should really see them in a more unified way. As Fr. Bob put it, to live a 'holy' life, one has to live 'wholly.' My life, on the other hand, is basically fragmented, with a separate self or identity for each sphere, and my spiritual life/self is more often than not MIA at work and at home.
Fr. Bob covered a lot of stuff in those two hours, but one of the more interesting things he talked about was the prominence of labour in the Bible. The very first image of God we encounter is a creative worker/labourer who starts out with chaos and goes to work creating order. Fast-forward to the New Testament, Jesus is a carpenter, and most of his disciples are fishermen who were 'called by God' while working. And the vast majority of parables are about workers and/or acts of work. The disciples themselves probably worked as much as they preached, if not more so since they probably did most of their preaching during the Sabbath. How else could they have such large crowds to preach to? In essence, the Bible is a spiritual book of and for workers.
Going back to the beginning of Genesis for a moment, where we see God as a kind of divine proletariat, creating order out of chaos and evaluating whether or not their work is good each day, it's curious that God rests. Why would God need to rest? It doesn't make much sense. But I think it does make sense if we see these stories as talking about us. God creates according to their will. We, too, create according to our will. Our ability to produce things, especially our means of subsistence, is one of the things that sets us apart from other animals. We're created in God's image, and God rests. We, too, need to rest to enjoy the fruits of our labour and the company of one another.
And we can see the call of Simon in Luke as a call of vocation, of work transformed. When Jesus tells Simon to, "Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch," it's as if he's saying, "Give your work deeper meaning." And the huge catch Simon nets, leading to his discipleship as a 'fisher of people,' can be seen as a change in his working life. It's a call for all of us to cast deeper, to find our own call in our working life. What in our work engages us? What holds our hearts? Fr. Bob went through some lists of criteria to look for in our own jobs and lives in order to help determine if we're where we're supposed to be.
Something that I realized is, my call is avocational and relational. My work has basically none of the criteria for a call, or even something that's good for me. But my job helps me with my spiritual life and relationship, giving me the time to attend all of my groups and classes, attend mass on Sundays, spend time with Annie, etc. It's what I want at the moment. It's OK for now, but I'll eventually need to look for something else, something more, so that my call and vocation are more complementary.
But I'm still having trouble fully committing myself to my spiritual practices, and more often than not find myself getting caught up in sensual pleasures and listening to all the little voices that tell me each day, "It's OK, you can start taking things seriously tomorrow. Just enjoy yourself today." I think part of that's natural and something many of us find ourselves struggling with; but I think part of it could also be fear of where following my call might lead me—into consecrated religious life. And that's something I'm not sure I'm ready for yet.
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