This Ignatian Life

I feel that God has been inviting me to “step up” and take on a more adult role. Over the last few weeks, very familiar situations at home and at work have felt somehow different. For most of my life up to now, I would leave initiative and decision-making to others, focusing my “priestly” efforts on building little bridges, doing little favors, and otherwise trying to help other people’s projects and relationships go smoothly. Lately, though, I’ve begun to perceive people looking to me for initiative and advice on big decisions, and I’m starting to feel like I have something to offer at that level.

For example, I have been participating in a series of meetings at work for over a year, where there has been a running controversy over the structure of our NGO’s three offices. At every single meeting, the three directors would all agree that we should have the same structure to facilitate our working together, but then they would each be defensive about their own particular structure. And whenever the topic came up, the rest of us at the meeting would roll our eyes and say to ourselves, “Here we go again.” Some people have been a part of these meetings for several years, and they say it’s always been the same controversy.

Before, I would simply leave those issues to the “big dogs” and focus on what’s in my job description, or maybe try, during a coffee break, to help one director see the value in what the other director was saying. Since I’d been feeling this movement of the Spirit lately, though, last week’s meeting was different. When the topic came up, the directors started raising their voices, the co-workers started rolling their eyes, and I said to myself: “I think I can contribute to solving this.”

When I asked for a turn to speak, I knew that most of the people in the room would rather that the argument end quickly so we could move on to the points on the agenda, and they would resent my dwelling on an issue that everybody knew was destined to be an eternal stone in our collective shoe. I wasn’t sure what the three directors would think of my “going there.” But I was certain that the Good Spirit was placing before me yet another invitation to finally “step up” and assume a more adult role, with all its creative possibilities and all its dangerous risks.

My proposal was to organize our network around the principal lines of our strategic plan, rather than around a common structure which might not fit any of our offices well. If we come together around our shared mission (meeting in small groups by strategic line on which we work instead of by analogous positions in a structure), the differences between the offices’ particular structures are no longer a disturbance, and each can freely adapt to the place where our mission is incarnate.

I have no idea if this solution will last, but I did feel a sense of accomplishment when the three directors agreed, for now, that this way of looking at it could end the needless controversy. Some co-workers sneered skeptically, but others thanked me.

Like Paul’s “Jesuit suit” (see Paul’s most recent post), my understanding of my priestly role is developing. I’m not only called to smooth things over for other people’s projects; in some cases, I’m also called to take on an active leadership role in the projects that I’m a part of. I’m called to use and offer my talents, looking for the magis.

I can’t naively ignore that “stepping up” in this way will bring with it new traps and temptations, but to paraphrase what Ignatius once wrote to a Jesuit he had sent to the Portuguese court, our mission isn’t about avoiding danger, it’s about doing good. Sometimes we have to put ourselves out there, trusting in God’s grace.

Photo: “stepping up” by “franglo” from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)