"What do you want to be when you grow up?"
|
By: Rev. Kay Bessler Northcutt
Kay is a noted Disciple author,
theologian and preacher who teaches Homiletics at Phillips
Theological Seminary. |
It's a maddening question because for a lot of us the
most honest answer is, "I have no idea." But that's not socially
acceptable. In the United States of America what counts is what
you do and a lot of people out there define themselves (and everyone
else!) on the basis of what they do.
"What are you going to be when you grow up?" It
feels like a litmus test, as if there's an invisible 'mattering map' and
the answer you give - determines where you will end up on the 'mattering
map.' In America for instance, attorneys and physicians and CEO's
usually have executive status on the 'mattering map'. So maybe we
should all aspire to that?
Too often, we make choices about what we're going to
be when we grow up - because of the amount of security, money or
influence such a career will provide.
Those are important issues to consider but they are
not the best criteria for deciding what you "want to be when you grow
up."
More important (yes! more important than money, power,
security and a really, really great car) are issues of contentment, and
satisfaction and making a difference in God's world.
Contentment happens when what we do matches up with
who we are. Watch for this sign: when you are doing something and you
glimpse a powerful sense of God's pleasure while you are at work. That's
a really good sign that what you are doing is… a good match with who you
are!
Temperament is an old fashioned word that means: what
kind of human being are you? Carolyn Gratton says (in her great book The
Art of Spiritual Guidance) that there are four basic types of religious
temperament. See if you recognize yourself:
- "Some people feel the power of God first and foremost through
their hunger for justice, their yearning to care for others, to help
others get what they have a right to as human persons.
- Others feel God most keenly through their deep response to
beauty, and their intuitive understanding of the way beauty opens
the human spirit and refines it.
- Some of us feel God most deeply in our passion to uncover the
truth of things, for the sake of everyone…
- Some spiritual temperaments, for whom goodness and kindness are
the face of God, long for a lifework that can express their
compassion. They have, from the beginning, an enthusiasm for
service."
Recognize yourself in any of the four? Or is there another category
you would use to characterize your temperament?
Have some discussions with the adults and friends and family in your
life. Give them those four options. See where they'd place themselves.
Then ask where they might place you?
Talk about money and contentment, about power and service, about
"where you most feel God's pleasure" in your lives.
And begin heading in that direction! |
