I was born in Cleveland, moved to Bloomfield Hills, Mich., when I was 8, then lived near Pittsburgh during high school. After attending Michigan State University, I spent three years in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, then 27 years in Saginaw, Mich., before spending a little over a year west of Chicago, and the past 10 years in northeast Ohio.
I grew up Presbyterian, met my wife and married her in a Reformed Church in America church, was United Methodist for 30 years, joined an Evangelical Free church in Illinois, and now attend a non-denominational church.
All of that to say: I have no home on this earth. I hold all things loosely.
Digging in, then pulling out
I have trouble fitting in. If you have lived the same place all your life and kept the same friends all that time, I will remain an outsider to you.
I’m OK with that.
At the same time, I’m now comfortable in new spaces around people I don’t know. I’m not afraid to try new things, seek a new experience, attempt something different.
I mentor or tutor young people in several venues, one of which is new to me this fall. I’m in two men’s Bible study groups. As the director of a weekly food pantry, I’m around people in poverty all the time.
I hold onto all things loosely, and I dig roots at the same time.
I’ll get involved as long as I’m here.
I thought I would retire in Saginaw, but that didn’t happen. When we left, I had to leave several volunteer activities I had committed to.
When we moved to Rockford, Ill., I thought that job would take me to retirement as well. That didn’t happen either.
But in the year we lived there, I donated a gallon of blood, was a reading tutor in a Rockford elementary school, and joined a church. I planned to stay longer, but that’s the way life goes sometimes.
The pursuit of passion
God has wired me to serve. It’s a mindset that drives me. Not everyone has that drive, of course. Your passions in life most likely are different.
But you have them.
We need to discover what our passions are. It’s where we find meaning and purpose in life.
I don’t mean temporal passions that come and go. Those are self-centered, as opposed to others-centered.
Some of you are good at music, photography, theater, drawing or writing. The creative arts often take a back seat to more mundane skills, but creativity provides passion and enjoyment, even if it doesn’t pay well. They are worth pursuing.
Some of you have a gift for fixing things, or building things. Frankly, we need more of you. Who do I call if a spring on the garage door opener breaks on a Saturday? That happened to us recently.
Or, fixing a leak in a drain pipe. Or building a cabinet. Or … fill in the blank.
A good friend of ours is a plumber. His schedule is full for several months out. It’s hard work but it pays well. Hopefully, jobs like his are worth the effort for some of you.
Some of you have a gift for working with senior citizens, or with disabled people. My parents are elderly and not in good health; those caring for their needs have to receive a special kind of grace from God.
If you are serving people with disabilities, you also are a very special person. It’s often hard, behind the scenes, sometimes messy, without a lot of encouragement or praise. God sees, and God knows. So do the people closest to those you are serving, hopefully.
Some of you have a gift for languages. I don’t know Spanish, but I’m grateful to be around several people who do, since at the food pantry we interact with a fair number of Puerto Ricans for whom English is not their first language.
Some of you mow the grass and plow snow for those of us who no longer can or wish to do those things. You work long hours, sometimes in the wee hours, and need the weather to cooperate to do your job.
Same with farmers, those ever-shrinking and often forgotten providers of our food.
Bridging the disconnect
Many of our passions revolve around the paycheck, don’t they?
Or, perhaps they don’t – and that’s the great disconnect this country is seeing right now.
We are not finding passion in the workplace. We must work, but we want more.
We want different.
And we don’t know where to find it.
The corporate culture is not healthy right now. Many businesses aren’t offering a living wage, and those that do (as well as those that don’t) are having a hard time finding qualified, passionate individuals to work for them.
It goes both ways. There’s a huge blame game going on, and we need a new mindset. All of us.
Even when I was working (I’m retired now), I volunteered in the community. I found passion there.
When I was about 30 years old, I read a book that influenced me greatly: The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven R. Covey. One of those habits is to “Begin with the end in mind.” In that chapter is a section on writing a personal mission statement. I took some time and wrote one out.
That helped me discover what my passions were – and weren’t.
Personal mission statements change over time as circumstances change, but that’s a good starting point.
Perhaps this is a good New Year’s resolution: Let’s discover our purpose in life, if we don’t already know it.
Find a reason or two to get up in the morning. Pursue your passions. That’s where you’ll find your life purpose.
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