Vocation ... Within Vocation

by Paul Wilkes

I faced a full schedule: a blur of conferences with various editors-- breakfast, lunch, and dinner meetings. I don't get to New York that often, so I had crammed a daunting list into fourteen waking hours. But looking ahead, as I planned my schedule from Carolina, I wanted this day to be different from my other trips to New York. As I would be going about my workday, the Mepkin monks would be going about theirs, each of us in pursuit of our particular vocation. I wanted the spirit of the monastery to be with me, monastic wisdom to be my guide.

Throughout the day, monks continually pause to refocus on what they are doing and to discern whether it and they are pleasing to God. After these many months of exposure to monastic ways and ora, I, too, wanted to be monastically mindful of how I went about my labora. But I knew if I had any chance to do this, I had to take as much care in finding both time and a place to pause as I needed to take to arrive on time at the right place for my appointments. To address that need, I had a simple plan: I would find a church to visit between as many of my stops as possible.

While we may treasure the reflectiveness that comes naturally in places like Mepkin, we may equally regard it as a luxury we can ill afford in the rest of our lives --- especially our work lives. There is hardly a minute in our workday that is not already overcommitted, we plead. If anything, we may feel the need to jam in still more to 1) survive, 2) advance, or 3) simply do what we do better. Yet even our protests are evidence of another voice within us, the voice of our mindful selves. It has something different to say: Be still. Go slow. Look. Be. Somehow we sense that if we want to live a life at once more fully human and more nearly divine --- an enlightened, spiritual life --- we cannot simply consign our spiritual health to the few hours most of our lives ever give us at whatever holy places we may have discovered.

Although the world may tell us that success, as measured by the size of a paycheck, is all the reward we need in our chosen (or, at times, unchosen) vocation, our souls tell us something quite different . There must be more to our lives than work. Not one of us would willingly agree to be reduced to a soul the size of the job we have. But this says at least as much about our work as it says about us; we want, and lack, work that feeds the soul --- or at least which will not stunt its growth.

If monastic wisdom has anything at all to say to our modern working world, it is that our labors, humble or vaunted, are potentially an unending source of holiness, purification, and grace. Monk or mechanic, computer programmer, writer, forest ranger, stockbroker --- all can be worthy, even sacred, vocations. "Vocation" is not a word that applies only to those in religious life; there is a God in heaven who looks down mercifully upon us, loves us and apportions to each tasks and opportunities in this life.

Yet, finding a vocation --- and meaning within that vocation --- does not always come easily or naturally. This is no different for monks than it is for the rest of us. It is often difficult to look beneath the blurry surface to see the inner meaning and worth of a vocation we have chosen, or that --- a harder task --- fate or necessity have chosen for us. Equally, we may not always be so pleased to see who we are as we go about our work; the very thought of looking at our spiritual selves in our working lives is a threatening one, and so we turn away. It may seem an impossible chore to lift up the work of our hands and minds to God. Me? In my line of work?

Monastic wisdom flies in the face of many popular notions about both the kind of work we do and how we perform it. As Benedict decreed, a pot in the kitchen was to be no less venerated than a chalice on the altar. For Benedict, all types of work held the potential of offering intimacy with God, as well as personal happiness --- and therefore obliging our best effort. Work was not something at odds with or set aside from our spiritual selves, begrudgingly done to provide for bodily needs, somehow inferior to time spent in prayer or meditating upon the words or omniscience of God. Each of us has been given a unique part in the vast and ongoing co-creation and sanctification of this world; prayer alone, in the end, just isn't enough to accomplish that.

Indeed, monasticism would never claim that being a monk is one's true vocation. Rather, being a self-in-union-with-God is the true vocation. That, of course, might result in certain persons finding their home in a monastery. It is as fundamental as this: God summons us to being, not doing. It is in the discovery of our true selves, and the alignment of the self, whatever it might be, with God, that the deepest meaning of life on earth is found.

Mine turned out to be a day with more disappointments than affirmations, more enervation than inspiration, more humiliation than acclamation; I had little idea of the quality of my sowing. But with each church visit I found myself --- how can I say It? Refreshed? Grounded? Centered? Calmed? It was certainly not because of some gimlet-eyed focus on the specifics of what I was trying to accomplish. Rather, each visit provided a quiet, sometimes pretty generic reminder of who I was and how I needed to approach each encounter, subway ride, walk across town. I spoke with powerful editors in glassed-in offices and ordered coffee from a counter clerk in a deli. I saw opportunities for grace, some of which I missed, some of which I allowed. I was at turns kind and impatient, loving and stupid.

The day ended after 10:00 P.M. By now the Mepkin monks were long in their beds. At this hour open churches are not that easy to find in Manhattan, so on a ride up Broadway I sat quietly in the back seat of my private chapel, a Yellow cab. I could not remember the prayers of compline; I could barely remember where I was heading just then. It had certainly been an imperfect day. Yet tired though I was, a certain calm presence was also with me. Was I finally able to pray? All I know is that a feeling of extraordinary gratefulness flowed over me as I recounted the hours of my workday liturgy.

Paul Wilkes is a practicing Catholic and lives with his wife and two sons in Wilmington NC. This article was excerpted with permission from Paul's book, Beyond the Walls: Monastic Wisdom for Everyday Life (Doubleday, 1999). Paul is also directing the Pastoral Summit in New Orleans May 2001.