May 08 2007
A Little Inspiration
Several of my blogger friends are in a state of career flux at the moment. I found a sound clip which I’d like to share, and then we will continue with our detachment posts and see where they lead us.
This sound clip (and as such, it ends rather abruptly) is taken from, “The Beginner’s Guide to Finding Your Perfect Job”, by Rick Jarow, Ph.D., who is a practising alternative career counsellor and associate professor of religion at Vassar College. It’s fifteen minutes in length, so please come back later if you do not have the time right now.
Jarow’s ideas concerning ‘abundance’ are refreshing, and certainly in line with a contemplative attitude. I hope everyone will find this to be an inspiring bit of audio, whether we are experiencing career/vocation difficulties at this very moment or not.
So here it is; I’d be pleased to know what you think.
listen to it tomorrow. I hope. You are one of
the most thoughtful people I’ve ever met, even
though we’ve never “met”. What a doll.
I put up one of my new pages last night, Music, Math and Mystics. You’ll all get to know me a little better; you might even want to take me off your blogroll. I’m just warning you, is all.
No more “later,” Carol. Right now.
There was one job I went after aggressively, and got. I was about to sign final papers and make out the W4 when I found myself driving through the country instead, to pray on it one more time, because it wasn’t setting my heart on fire. An excellent administrative asst. job, great pay, regular hours, benefits, respect, perks galore, network galore, yada yada. It would’ve, however, left me “dressing the part,” and I’d be fitting myself into others’ worlds (as usual) to monetarily and security-wise benefit my family. Nothing wrong with that.. unless it kills you on the inside/moves you away from God, or leaves you yawning day after day in a lackluster reason to get up. I was mortified as I apologized for turning down the job, but turn it down, I did–they were more appreciative of it than I could’ve guessed. Somehow, the boss understood perfectly.
I’ve wrestled with myself the past few years, but I’ve never not known what my passion is, and I’ve been told often enough that there is talent visible, there, too. Yet the shoulds overwhelm me — even as I did not let them overwhelm my husband who was trained as a civil engineer but did not like any aspect of being indoors; we agreed that he should take the housebuilding job instead, even tho’ we’d struggle all our lives to make ends meet.
What — I’m not worthy of the same day-to-day peace of heart? We all are. As this guy says, we are each here for a Reason. And, as I know for a fact, God cares about what’s going on or not inside one, down to the teensiest detail.
Although the logical step to nursing aide is full-fledged nursing – getting a degree, etc., which considering I have compassion, brains, and possibly enough money-making skills/offers to foot the bill, that inner argument springs from a million shoulds.. heck, I could even become a street nurse, etc. And perhaps should. But on the other hand, many days my heart just seizes up, and I go on automatic pilot.
Well, who knows what is down the road, but I’m about to “allow my true feelings to guide my life.” I’m going to start focusing on/exploring “my passion.” As I said to this friend, I’m tired of taking whatever comes down the pike. Even when I think I’m choosing my actions, I am usually capitulating. No more.
Thanks, Gabrielle. I gasped more than once. I’d be interested in hearing from others who listened, as to how it affects their vocation/job/etc.
who has a job interview on the 24th needed to
hear! I sent her the link and i hope she will
hear it before she goes for the meeting.
She’s a teacher in a Catholic school, but cannot
live on that salary anymore. She’s been teachin
over 20 years and is making peanuts.
Her son is about to start a catholic high school
and that will take a bite out of her tight budget.
And then, he’ll probably go to university!
She’s an excellent first grade teacher and even her
current principal agrees that she should open her horizons.
don’t know what the first two degrees of humility
are. It’s good to keep track of folks.
Wordpress has some kind of tracking system,
but I like the one I had before, so I put it back up.
You can see where the people are from with it.
I like seeing all those little flags from all over the world!
I don’t know what any degrees of humility are, but I do know that neither counters nor comboxes always reflect a thankful tear slipping down a cheek.
And that happens a lot, I hope. Catholic contemplative bloggers quite possibly need a tear-counter, as well as a LOL-meter and a gasp-graph.
Hmm,…I wonder what the gasp graph shows now??
I may come back later because I’ll probably miss something I wanted to say in response to your comments, but re the site meter, actually it was for sort of the opposite purpose to why most people have one. My first year blogging I didn’t want one; I said to Owen once that it was my little way of staying as cloistered on the Internet as possible, that, and not having a feed. But I decided to put one here (my mentioning the humility part was actually because I didn’t expect I was getting more than maybe ten people per week) because I want to be able to judge, if I can, whether or not I should be here, or doing some other kind of work for the Lord. That’s all. If this isn’t working to help people understand the contemplative life, then perhaps there’s something else I could be doing -workshops, retreats, I don’t know. But you know what I mean, I think.
I absolutely love the idea of a gasp/cry/laugh meter! I’m really happy you liked the sound clip – I did too; I found it very inspiring, and I’ll be listening to it a few more times and making some notes. I think sometimes I need to hear things over and over again before I truly believe that they might apply to me – others should live their passion – but it’s hard to believe it for oneself, isn’t it?
Oh, I knew I’d forget. Carol, when did your son get deployed? Have you heard from him since he left? You know I’ll be keeping him in my prayers. Oh yes.
He’s fine so far, thank you. He’s still down south, about to head to a base for training.. unless something intervenes. And please forgive my prick of miseryness.. I missed my calling — should’ve been a wildebeest. (They don’t have thumbs or pinkies – can’t hit the space bar or the enter bar.) As for counters and stats, etc., trust me when I say some (many) folks get up and check their Alexa ratings along with feeds and all the numbers. The internet has a thousand tentacles with which to drag folks in more and more deeply all the time.
I had a counter once, for about 5 minutes; it spooked the fuzz off my tongue to see who was looking in. I decided to trust that if I had anything of bread or water to say, it would get to the right person via the Holy Spirit. I threw holy water at the counter, then, and deleted it.
This speaker sort of reminded me of Wayne Dyer – have you heard of him or seen him, by any chance?
Carol, yes, I’ve heard of Wayne Dyer, and I know that he has alot of self-help books and audio, etc., but I really don’t know anything about him. I hope you’ll keep us up to date re your son; as you know, I know what that’s all about. Afghanistan, Iraq. Different countries; same fear and pain for a parent.
fmn, I hope for the best for your sister in her career challenge. I have a friend who teaches Grade 8. Every summer she does one or two courses online, and after “x” number of courses, she goes up in the salary range, and has a little better chance of moving where she might want to. She absolutely loves doing courses online.
Is your friend Canadian. If yes, that explains it. Catholic school teachers in Canada make a lot more than those in our diocese. After 20 years teaching, she still doesn’t even make what my cousin, who teaches in a catholic school in Toronto, used to make 20 years ago!
A few years ago at a group orientation for a Catholic Charities-involved nursing home, I listened to one tablemate say how she’d made $14/hr. plus mileage plus full head-to-toe benefits while LNAing for an agency. And I thought, “And here I sit, a dufus, willing to take $9.50/hr. and some free innoculations.” Well, that was fine — I’d known what the Church pays (or not) because I’ve twice been a church secretary. I knew what I was getting into, and if it was about the money, I’d not be there. As it happened, however, I’d come to the Home just after all the good Sisters had left, and much had hit the fan in the line of care. If they’d paid me $14/hr., it still wouldn’t have been enough to think nothing of leaving some in their rooms during Mass (that they knew they were missing), because they were an ultra- nuisance to get ready or there was no aide to spare to sit with them there. $90/hr. wouldn’t have been enough to let me continue on where elbows of Parkinson disease sufferers are slammed into walls.
The Church isn’t corporate America or Europe, so those who work for or in Her can’t expect the same remuneration.. it will always be a sacrifice, and it will always be appreciated.
Love,
Carol