2/9/18

I don't want to jinx it, but I may have found a job at Providence Portland Medical Center as a cleaning attendant. My first day would be Feb. 26th if all goes well with the background check and drug screening process.

The hours aren't ideal, and I'd have to work more weekends than not; but I'd have a job paying a bit more than my last one. It's not a glamorous job, though, and it won't be easy. I'll be cleaning hospital rooms, common areas, and ORs. I'll be dealing with sick people and in regular contact with every bodily fluid imaginable on a daily basis. It's a little intimidating, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't worried about on-the-job injuries and illnesses. But at the same time, I'd be doing something essential at a place designed to help people in need. And if I can approach it in the right way, it could help me to deepen my own personal spiritual practice.

If I do this job selfishly, only for myself and the money I'd get each payday, I'll most certainly suffer. It's hard work. It's dirty work. It's dangerous work at times. It's work that many might look down upon. And little about it will likely be enjoyable in and of itself. But if somehow I can find a way to do it with those I'm serving in mind, the people who come because they're sick or dying or visiting loved ones who are, and not allow my heart to be hardened by the work itself or the suffering around me, then the rewards I'll receive will be priceless.

We all share a common bond, a common nature, as humans; and in some ways, I think we've lost that connection to one another somewhere along the way. We get so wrapped up in our own lives and narratives that we lose the ability to love others as ourselves. It seems like a wonderful ideal, this selfless, reconciling love, but I don't think most of us actually think it's possible. But what if it is? What if all the great spiritual teachers throughout history are right?

To be able to develop an honest and healthy sense of humility, to intimately realize that nobody is beneath me, and to have the opportunity to serve those in need, are both things I desire greatly. I’m inspired by stories like that of the life of Francis of Assisi, who overcame his fear and self-centredness through acts of humility and charity in his own spiritual journey, caring for lepers and the poor out of love and compassion and being able to see in them the presence of God so easily obscured by their outward circumstances and our own spiritual blindness.

While I'm certainly no Francis of Assisi, I see in the story of his life an example of a path to inner peace and theosis, that experience of real and transformative union with divine nature that I think is open to all.