Sunday Newsletter

Masses Today

6.30: Des Delargy, (Anniv).
11.00: Peg Tierney, (Anniv)
6.30: Larry O'Donnell, (Anniv).

AS I WAS SAYING.....

We mark 'Vocations Sunday' this weekend. We realise our respective vocations through the work we do from day to day. A United States study published this week on the work which women do at home showed that it is worth €100,000 a year if compared, say, to the salary of a marketing director.

This highlights once again the crazy, upside-down world of work, money and rewards in which we live. Without intending to sound sentimental, the most important job (vocation, surely) in this world goes unrewarded from a monetary point of view. Leave aside for a moment, if you would, what the market might pay you, and reflect instead on what you might actually want from your work, both paid and unpaid. Speaking on radio recently, the Bishop of Oxford, Richard Harries suggested these five 'requirements' for a relatively balanced working life:

  1. work that is fulfilling and uses your gifts;
  2. work that you believe actually does some good to others;
  3. work that enables you to live reasonably - I know that begs a whole lot of questions;
  4. work that gives you time to be a parent, pursue some leisure activity and serve the wider community, such as voluntary work with some organisation;
  5. finally, work which is recognised and validated by society.

Suppose, suggested the bishop, that you give yourself up to 100 marks for each of those requirements, what would your total be? Admittedly, this is a crude yardstick, but a yardstick nonetheless. Harries gave himself 400 marks and counted himself among 'those who are blessed indeed,' or, as he put it, 'vocationally satisfied'.

Now, making that kind of calculation should not blind us to the reality of money. Thank God we do now have a minimum wage. But at €7.65 an hour what worker with (or even without!) a family could live on that? Job satisfaction matters obviously, but for those with little or no money, money must loom very large indeed. So let's not be so heavenly indifferent to the things of this world as to be of no earthly use.

Friday last Charles Handy's latest book was published. (See article below). He is considered to be one of the 5 most influential thinkers in the West. He has made the concept of 'the portfolio life' famous. He and his wife have divided up the year into the number of days they spend working for money, the number of days they work for free and so on. Behind this is a simple but courageous decision - to take control of life, to do the best you can with the actual gifts you have been given. And this highlights one further factor, what Christians call vocation, what we believe we are called to do, whether it is the supremely valuable work of parenting in an unpaid capacity or being a merchant banker, financing worthwhile projects and earning a lot of money so that you can give a lot of money away.

Each one of us is unique, with particular gifts in a particular context. As Cardinal Newman put it "God has created me to do him some definite service; he has committed some work to me which he has not committed to another".

-Dick Lyng

Items of Interest

"Like Feathers on the Breath of God."

"It's the power of sound and how a sound can bring you back to a memory, to a space in yourself which is above and beyond the here and now. " - Noirin Ni Riain

The power of hymns is the subject of a new documentary to be aired on R.T.E. Radio One on Sunday May 14 at 10 am. Programme-maker Seamus Kelly visits various people for whom the singing of hymns holds great importance. Contributors include Sonny Molloy who first sang at the Augustinian church in Galway as a young boy, began conducting the choir there in 1955 and where he continues to sing and conduct today.

Other contributors include the nuns of the Poor Clare Monastery, Nuns' Island, Galway; Rev. Patrick Towers and the choir of St. Nicholas' Collegiate Church, Galway; the Galway Boy Singers and singers Johnny Duhan, Mary McPartlan and Noirin Ni Riain.

The title, "Like Feathers on the Breath of God" is inspired by Hildegard, a 12th Benedictine Abbess whom Ni Riain quotes in the programme. While for many listeners hymns such as "Soul of my Saviour" will forever evoke a bygone era in Ireland of Corpus Christi processions, Sodality and Benediction services, the programme also highlights the enduring power of singing as a form of spirituality today.

R.T.E. Radio One, Sunday May 14th at 10:00 am ; Repeat Wednesday May 17th at 7 pm.

A Job or a Vocation?

Charles Handy was born (1932) and reared in rural Kildare. His father was Church of Ireland vicar there. Here began Handy's fascination with the disparity between 'job satisfaction' and monetary reward. To this day he holds that his father's priestly vocation has been the one most significant influence on his own life.

He pursued his education at Oriel College Oxford and then joined a Dutch oil company. The prospect of a posting to Liberia caused Handy to leave Shell in favour of the position of Professor of Business management in the London Business School. In the mid 1970s he decided to plough his own furrow in life as a writer, lecturer and consultant.

Handy coined the term "portfolio worker" for someone who works independently of an organisation and whose living was drawn from a number of differing elements. Here Handy drew a sharp distinction between 'a job' and 'a vocation'. The former entailed nothing stronger than loose affiliation, the latter full commitment. And these were the days before 'working from home' and 'multi-tasking' became commonplace.

It was only when Handy left the world of secure employment that his talents as a writer blossomed. In 'The Age of Unreason' (1989) he proposed the 'Shamrock Organisation' as a business model. Many have tied the symbol to his Irish background. The shamrock has long been powerful in Irish Church circles because of its apocryphal use by St Patrick as a symbol of the Holy Trinity. Handy is aware that this model can work as an interesting agent for exploring Church structures.

For Handy the first of the three leaves represented the professionals, the organisational core. (In Church terms, the clergy?) This leaf is shrinking in size. The second leaf contained the contractual fringe. Its contributors to the organisation were vital, but they were outsiders. (The laity?) In the third leaf were temporary workers and part-timers. (Those 'nominal' Catholics working in Church organisation, like Catholic schools and hospitals?) They contributed much, but were never part of the organisation. Many didn't want to be. They wanted jobs but not careers. They frequently double or triple-jobbed. In Handy's language, they were like fleas feeding off elephants. The latter were the large organisations. This was an analogy he pursued in 'The Elephant and the Flea', (2001).

He laments that blind greed still motivates too many. "We have created a mercenary society. Getting richer and richer, and bigger and bigger has become a substitute for not believing in what we are doing". Handy has much to say about education. His own education did not prepare him for "life as a flea". He is convinced that there is no God-given definition of success. He does believe, however, that we are each of us unique. We each have something to contribute to the world, and the search for meaning is finding out what that is before we die. As we have seen already, this fits very neatly with Cardinal Newman's understanding of the Christian vocation.

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