My
Personal Calling
is
to accept love, to grow, and to love others into growing.
My mission in life is to accept myself as I
am while striving to become a person of complete and mature love and to accept
others as they are while simultaneously helping them to grow in love as they
move toward their own life destinies. I
feel that I am most fully engaged in this while enjoying life with my loved
ones and while engaged in the pursuit of integrating the life of the mind and
the life of the spirit. My spiritual
roots are Christian, and for many years I have been nourished and nurtured by
inclusive Protestantism. I honor these
roots by walking the way of love taught, practiced, and lived by Jesus, even as
this love impels me beyond the bounds of Christian tradition as I seek goodness,
truth, and beauty in every person and in the world’s wisdom as expressed in religion,
literature, history, music, art, philosophy, and science. I see these expressions of wisdom as gifts of
the divine that liberate people from whatever binds them and that help people
grow into their own life destinies. Wherever
it is found, I will study this wisdom appreciatively, critically, and with a
postcritical naivete; I will teach it in ways that are appropriate to the
development of those around me; and I will practice it in ways that are
integral to who I am now and to who I hope to become.
My life is guided by these values:
- Unconditional
love: My life is rooted in the
lives of those who have loved me no matter what: my God, my wife Grace
and son Keith, my best friends, and my mentors. They empower me to share that love with
more and more people.
- Relationships: As I seek proactively to establish new
relationships, I will strengthen existing ones by returning people’s love
and acceptance and by being there for them.
- Growth: As I grow, I pledge my love to others
during their own life discoveries, their successes and their failures, by
encouraging them to grow into their own life destinies, without pressuring
them to be what I want them to be.
- Justice: My heart aches at systems that keep
people from actualizing their God-given potential.
- Joy
(and Joy’s little brother Fun): I have come to experience God more fully
when I lose myself by experiencing play, beauty, ecstasy, imagination, and
wonder.
My vision is to become . . .
·
a whole soul,
whom love has liberated and healed.
·
a loving person,
who touches more and more people.
·
a spiritual teacher and leader,
with both a large heart and skillful “hands” engaged in organizing and
communicating ideas, creating processes, casting vision, inspiring passion, and
mentoring leaders.
so that . . .
·
I
o
let God’s light shine in my life by
actively seeking to see that light in others.
o
engage in spiritual practices, alone
and with others, that penetrate to the depths of who we are so that we can be
liberated from what binds us and lifted up to become the persons we were
created to become.
o
have finished my dissertation.
·
my family and friends are strong and
joyful, finding Spirit in the flow of love,
o
in particular, so that my son Keith,
who has become an adult with an array of competencies for living, based on
love, acceptance, and continued growth into his own destiny, will develop such
a mutual relationship with his new wife Auburn,
o
and that my wife Grace and I are more
in love than ever.
·
those around me experience the love
and acceptance that gives strength to find and take their next steps of
development toward
fulfilling their own unique life calling,
o
particularly
that my students learn spiritual wisdom and experience love, rooting them in
their own faith traditions and exposing them to other life-giving traditions,
o
and
particularly that Union College will have specific, functioning systems for helping
students, faculty, and staff engage in the spiritual quest by walking the way
of love in all its
§
breadth—intentional
practices of love, hospitality, welcome, and inclusion so that people know
that, no matter who they are, they are loved and welcome at Spiritual Life
activities.
§
depth—practices
of love that go all the way to the core of who we are, digging down deep in our
spirituality, learning who we are by studying the Bible and other spiritual
writings, by praying and worshiping together, and by serving others together.
§ height—practices of
love that lift us up to become persons characterized by love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness,
gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23).
7 comments:
I feel guilty in that you bare your heart and soul, and all I come up with as a comment is something rather silly. Anyway, here it is: David, you gotta come up with a better acronym for your ethos. "URGJJ" just doesn't have the same "umph" as, say, TULIP. TULIP, while a horrid theological system (IMHO), is at least easy to remember and has a nice ring to it. URGJJ, sadly, doesn't.
Aside from the silliness, your ethos is very admirable, not the least for it being imitable.
That is hilarious. I've used this statement (or some version of it) for almost fifteen years, and I never once thought of coming up with an acronym.
David, I don't know why my Id was listed as my church committee (GELT). In case you haven't figured it out, or Google does it to me again, it's Wendell. You're a UM, and you never thought to come up with an acronym? How's that possible? UMs can't do anything without acronyms!
Ah, no, I didn't know that was you. How about JULEP?
Justice
Unconditional Love
Loving Relationships (Love twice because it's so important)
Exponential Growth
Play
Made a huge typo. So will try again. JULEP works for me. Passes all the good acronym criteria.
I had to make it rhyme with TULIP! :)
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