The right fit

Winter has begun and it's cold. So very, very cold. I wasn't ready for it to be this cold. Admittedly, I'm never ready for it to be cold. Maybe it's my Filipino genes, maybe it's my last name (Burns), maybe I'm just a wuss; but my body just doesn't cope with the cooler climates of winter. Disappointingly, my once reliable collection of old hoodies and my only pair of track pants (which was once part of my high school basketball warm up uniform) lacked the necessary warmth. Thus, I decided it was time to ditch the sentiment in favour of actually being warm.

So it was that I found myself in the menswear section of a store, searching for the right fit. It seemed I got to the "buy warm clothes" party about a week late, as I dug through messy mounds of winter wear. What began as an innocent search for new clothes quickly became a battle of comfort vs style: to what level of dagginess was I prepared to stoop to in my search for warmth?

However, in the end it became a search for something that would actually fit me. The process looked a bit like this: Adam picks up garment, Adam decides said garment meets warmth and/or style conditions, Adam tries on said garment, said garment does not fit Adam, process repeats. My usual clothes shopping routine is nowhere near this involved, however the rather diminished range of sizes forced me to actually try on each piece of clothing to check if the bigger or smaller size would still fit.

After an extended amount of time (certainly a longer period than I would normally have patience for) I lost all hope in this particular store and decided it was time to investigate another store (searching more than one store further indicates my desperation). As I cleared the menswear section, I spotted a clothes rack in the corner of my eye. Had I checked it already? I wasn't sure, but I decided to walk past it and give it a quick scan, not wanting to commit lest I be greeted by further disappointment. And there it was: a blue jumper, thick material, only minimally bogan-looking AND in the right size. It was too good to be true, so I double checked for any tears, holes or stains. It was good. Finally, I found the right fit.

My shopping experience somewhat resembles the vocational journey. Like my search for the right winter clothing, the discernment journey has many elements. When looking at ordained, religious, single or married life, one might ask: which option would best function for me? Which looks good? But then one might come to a point where they look beyond the aesthetic value and get to what we might call the "nitty gritty" vocation question: "is this where I fit?"

It's crucial that this process of "trying on" actually happens. Window shopping for a vocation will rarely lead to the conviction one needs to fully live God's call. I think part of this is seeing a vocation as a lifelong decision making process, not one decision made for life. That's why, for example, a man goes through a discernment and application process before they even go to the seminary, then spends almost seven years in formation before they become a priest. Similarly, before getting married a couple spend at least some time dating before they get engaged and undergo marriage prep before their wedding day. Regardless of which state of life we end up in, it's still a daily decision. Every day I have to make choices about who I am, I'm not automatically me. Likewise, every priest, nun, sister, brother, husband, wife and lay person has to choose how they live out their vocation regardless of which state of life they are in.

Additionally, it's not something we decide on our own. When my girlfriend noticed my new jumper (which I interpreted as approval), it was confirmation I had made the right choice...though now I'm realising she didn't actually say she liked it, she only asked if it was new! If we base our vocational decisions only on our own thoughts then we will only serve ourselves in our vocation. However, if God, family, friends, mentors, the Church and the community are involved in the discernment process, then the living out of that call will fundamentally involve them.

Finally, discernment isn't one size fits all. It took me numerous attempts at discerning priesthood before I realised it wasn't where I was called, whereas some of my mates knew they were called to marriage the moment they laid eyes on their now wives. The only way to know is to step into the store and try on the product. Or perhaps more accurately, to step out of ourselves and to find where we truly fit.

Get on with it

I just submitted my last essay for this semester at uni. Honestly, it has not been my favourite semester of study. Far from it. I was slow moving at the beginning, still carrying lethargy held over from the previous semester. I found that I couldn't get into the subject content. My timetable was inconvenient. And several work related trips and a holiday prevented me from getting to numerous classes. It was just a very random, very slow moving, odd sort of semester. Hence my excitement to have submitted this final essay.

That same staleness extended into my work life too. For a good portion of this year so far, a significant proportion of my work was accompanied by rolled eyes and groans of despair. Yet, when I look back on the beginning of this year, its hard to pinpoint just what went wrong for me. Sure, my year started of with an uncertain living situation and several other personal messes; but for the most part it has been business as usual.

It was only recently that the answer dawned on me. You see, 16 year old Adam decided he didn't want to "sell out". I wasn't going to play the games of what I saw to be a corporate-driven, resume-ic society, interested only in what you've done or what you can do, not in who you are. Part of my anarchic, rebellious, free-spirited attitude was born of big dreams. Most of it was underwritten by uncertainty of what I could actually do and a laziness to figure it out.

That led to a wild, free-wheeling adventure - at the least significantly wilder and more free-wheeling than a sixteen year old introverted homebody could imagine for himself. A real job or an education were the last things on my mind.

Fast forward to the first few months of this year and I found myself it what seemed like an unending game of catch ups with university and work. Sixteen year old Adam was raging inside of me in the form of disillusionment and impatience. It was all becoming too much like hard work and that big dreamer in me felt like the dream had died.

That's not where my head's at now. The last few months I wrestled with the seeming plain-ness of my lifestyle and somehow discovered my legacy in it. Ok, that's a dramatic leap, but somewhere within the mounds of assignments and paperwork I found myself taking responsibility for my life. Every word of that 1600 word essay or work-related email was a subconscious choice to be something more than an inspired thought. I'm not just studying or working for the sake of it.

See, that dream that sixteen year old Adam had was to make a difference in the world, and I thought that meant I had to be different. It's easy to be different by doing less - or being less. This year life did feel different because I was doing more: more work, more study then I ever had before. Doing more I hope will lead to being more. And being more is significant as my dreams become more specific. As a (nearly) twenty-five year old, (what feels to be like) nearly graduated, (relatively) somewhat experienced Church worker; starting a family and working a full-time job where I get to impact the community is more reality than a idea.

The point of all of this is that I grew disillusioned by a process. I think in wanting to make sense of our life and experiences, in valuing our call or vocation, we try to give meaning to everything in life. That's not realistic. There are things in life that don't carry the same weight as significant objectives, there are things in life that are simply processes. The processes still matter obviously - if I didn't care about my uni work I would fail my classes and what help would it be to me then? - but they don't have to be packed full of excitement.

As young people or as dreamers perhaps we look for that excitement everywhere and in everything. When we don't find it we grow disillusioned and lose sense of the bigger picture. In learning not to get bogged down in the processes, I grew in my self-knowledge. In just getting on with it I learned about the things I actually prioritise and I was able to get on with being about who I know I'm called to be.

Life is more than the processes. We shouldn't get so caught up in them we lose touch with the bigger picture.

Get yourself together

Honestly, sometimes I get "over it". The rush, that is, between work and uni and family life and social life and trying to make it all fit together.  Just recently I became keenly aware of how over it I really was. I was reminiscing about the good old days, of piling into a van with a team of fellow youth ministers and travelling around the country. At the time I took for granted the adventure: travelling from town to town, living out of a suitcase, interacting with all sorts of different people and seeing amazing sights and scenery. Now, often chained to a desk writing assignments or planning events, those days seem grand and fantastic.

Reminiscing morphed into daydreaming, and the question arose: is this the life I want for myself? Seventeen year old Adam would look at twenty-four year old Adam and tell him he sold out. He bought into the expectations of society, into a perceived definition of success. Seventeen year old Adam didn't want to work out of an office and didn't want to study for the sake of getting a piece of paper. I began fantasizing about how I could escape the work grind, about how I could recapture that sense of adventure in my life.

The grass looks greener on the other side; and look, I do love my job and I do enjoy learning and I do have good friends and relationships....but, in times of struggle or challenge, my mind often drifts to the "what if" instead of "what is". I see this time of my life as a sort of transition period between the adventures of my youth and growing up, getting married and starting a family. Instead of embracing this time, I can take the easy way out and imagine how life would be if certain aspects of my past were different, or I let my mind run away into fantasies of the future.

This way of thinking prevents us from life to the full. It prevents us from ever understanding how God can be a part of our life and how our life can be a part of something bigger. In your own life, when confronted with a decision or problem or trial, have you gone to the "what if?" question? Or when you're unsettled or discontent, do you let your mind jump ahead five or ten years to the "what should be?" and determine that future life is better than the present?

That "what if?" or "what should be?" question manifests into a whingeing and complaining, something which my girlfriend found annoying. She very sternly told me to "get myself together". I've heard those words before, but this time they carried greater meaning. Work, uni, relationships: they're all parts of my life but I was letting them dictate me. To "get myself together" meant reigning these things back in and not allowing them to be burdens.

That's the obvious part, the real revelation for me was this: God's call is to pull yourself together. We illustrate vocation as God's call, but often it's not an audible voice (though this is not impossible). Practically listening to God's call involves being attentive to all the parts of one's life: gifts, passions, experiences, family, friends, community, faith, work, study, etc. Discernment requires one to pull these things together, to be attentive to what they mean and to determine how these can form a life journey which serves God, Church and the world.

In this context vocation isn't a future decision, nor is it a past once-off decision. It's being present to God's call now. For me, the challenge is that I don't feel called to be stuck at a desk or making endless contact calls or with my head stuck in the books. Pulling myself together meant acknowledging that I need to do the work in order to do the things I do feel called to. Discernment is that awareness to align the different parts of my life with how I understand God's call. That's something I'll do everyday of my life, not just when I was an adventurous youth minister, nor just when I'm married and starting a family.

We use many concepts, categories and images to explain vocation; put simply, it is response. God calls us and our response is to pull together our life so that we may respond with our whole self to that call. That might seem oversimplified, but sometimes we need the simple when life feels complicated. In those times, rather than getting over it, we need to get with it; it being the reality of God in our lives.