CALL-PASSION-PURPOSE, PART II . .

As I continue to reflect upon our topic a quotation from Viktor Frankl comes to mind (if, gentle reader, you have not read his powerful autobiography, ‘Man’s Search for Meaning,’ I invite you to do so). Frankl writes: We can discover the meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by doing a deed; (2) by experiencing a value; (3) by suffering.

Here are a few questions that I have found to be helpful when I reflect upon my ‘Call-Passion-Purpose’: Who am I? Who am I choosing to become? Why am I choosing THIS becoming? Why am I here? Where am I choosing to go? Why am I choosing to go there? What am I doing as I go there? If I stay my on my current path, where will I end up?

As human beings we are by nature curious, searchers, seekers, learners and meaning-makers. We are ‘curious’ about our C-P-P; we search and seek to understand each dimension and the ‘whole’ of it; as we travel through life we seek to learn about our C-P-P and in doing so we seek to ‘name’ and ‘make sense of’ each of our C-P-P dimensions. When our C-P-Ps are congruent we live a life of ‘wholeness’ (whole = to heal); there is a ‘religious’ aspect to who we are (‘religio’ = to bind together, to make whole); we are more able to be vulnerable (to risk, to be open-transparent, and to ‘carry our wounds grace-fully’ – Note: Vulnerable’s root is the Latin ‘vulnus’ which means to carry the wound with grace); we also experience ‘being powerful’ (power = one’s ability to act rooted in reflection); and we do all of this with ‘courage’ (i.e. with ‘heart’ – Courage is rooted in the Old French word ‘cuer’ which means, ‘heart’).

We are not perfect and so we will not always life a life of ‘wholeness.’ When our C-P-P are not congruent we live a life of dissonance; we live a divided-life. Living a divided life takes a great deal of energy and increases our distress levels and contributes to our dis-ease. There are some signals that remind us that we are living a divided life. Here are a few of them (you, gentle reader, can add your own): We feel ‘empty;’ we feel ‘anxious’ – at times for no reason; we feel ‘on edge’ – we have a short fuse; we feel ‘unsure’ of ourselves and our judgments; we feel ‘lost’ – as if we are in a wilderness; we feel ‘confused’ – we have difficulty making-meaning out of our life; we are ‘fear-full.’

Regarding being ‘fear-full.’ This state of dissonance is so pervasive that the statement that occurs the most in the Scripture for the People of the Book (Jews, Christians, Muslims) and that occurs most often in the great wisdom traditions is: ‘Be Not Afraid!’. This does not mean that we are not to be fearful; it means that we must not become our fear. Once we become our fear then our life takes a path that is truly full of dis-ease.

I will close this morning with a long quotation from Andrew Greeley. Greeley writes: It seems to me that in the last analysis there are only two choices: Macbeth’s contention that life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing, and Pierre Teilhard’s “something is afoot in the universe, something that looks like gestation and birth.” Either there is a plan and a purpose – and that plan and purpose can best be expressed by the words ‘life’ and ‘love’ – or we live in a cruel, arbitrary, and deceptive cosmos in which our lives are a brief transition between two oblivions.