Where do you get the meaning in your life?
Have you ever had that feeling, like a star burning just under your ribs in the center of your being, radiating hidden light and unlimited energy, that THIS is something you could dedicate your life to? Something you could get up to every morning and look it in the eye and no matter whether it was easy or hard that day, always be drawn back into that relationship, that journey? Something that would never bore you, something you’d always want to be with, because there’s nothing you’d rather do—because without it, nothing else would be meaningful?
If you have, and that something actually corresponded with a feasible set of possibilities in your current life situation... you are very lucky.
If you haven't, or if you have but the translation of that feeling into things you can realistically do with your time was complicated and confused... you're like most people, I suspect. Welcome to the dimension we call reality.
I, for instance, will probably never be a married Jesuit priest. If I were a priest, I could use my head to study and teach theology and write homilies, my heart for the human connections of spiritual care, and my developing organizational/leadership skills for the business of leading a church. It sounds great. Sounds wonderful, in fact. But I can't do that in the church I've grown up in. (I picked the Jesuits for my little flight of imagination because they’re intellectuals, but passionately focused on social justice too. I like to think I’d fit in with a crowd like that.)
Four and a half months ago I got back from Peru jetlagged and nauseous from flying overnight, badly in need of a haircut, hauling my guitar and two beat-up suitcases and shivering in my little Lima jacket on Inauguration Day… and despite the exhaustion, I felt like I arrived charged with a marvelous energy. I’d seen something in that insane Latin American country that I’d never seen here. Call it love, call it a simpler life, call it community, call it the face of Christ in the poor and needy and the redemption that comes from reaching out to them. It was a connection that gave me meaning. During my first days back home I felt a deep desire to ask every American I saw—What is important to you? Where’s your meaning at? What feeds your inner self, in the midst of our darling culture’s obsession with buying crap we don’t need? And what’s it LIKE here, what’s LIFE like for you? What’s on the radio these days?? What music are you dancing to when nobody’s looking???
(My answer: that really catchy one-note song, “Because when I arrive, I—I’ll bring the fire make you come, alive, I—I’ll take you higher…” And the car-dancing began.)
My volunteer experience is over, but life continues. At this point I’m interested in putting together my two very different worlds and discovering how a young, modern American can seek out and live a deep spirituality—which is to say, a deep, full life. I have no set-in-stone career plan. I’m not going to become a nun, because shutting off all possibilities of relationships and family in my life does not feel life-giving to me. I don’t know what form of ministry I’ll find fulfilling in my church; I may consider other churches that would let me do other things. But I’m on this journey, and I believe many others are too. I like it because it involves me doing crazy things and learning to laugh more.
As I move into the next phase of life, I feel it's best to end this specifically volunteer-experience-based blog (except for those vacation pictures I still have to put up) and begin a new one. (So sad! But true!) My new blog will explore my thoughts related to spirituality in a broad sense—things I’m learning about how to live as a human in this world—and continue chronicling my adventures, Peruvian and otherwise! Please see my new exciting post-volunteering blog at:
http://kfwanderer.wordpress.com.
July 4th: I head back to Peru until I take it into my head to come back. Sometime within the next year, ideally February: I begin a Master’s degree in theology, and see if I can’t figure out some of this nuttiness called life in abundance.
If my musings amuse you—welcome along!
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