On the Bucket List
On the Bucket List
A week ago, at Monday Morning Prayer, Phil Woodward of the philosophy department called our attention to something that we probably all knew, if we’d stop to think about it — that people who live in monasteries don’t have career goals.
This might seem like a strange way to live. After all, the youngest in our community are striving to develop career goals. Those of us who are a little older and maybe on our way to fulfilling some of our goals and establishing more, even those of us at the latter end of careers have our plans. We call them bucket lists. These are things we’d like to get done or experiences we’d like to have before we “kick the bucket.”
Frequently we tie a strong sense of satisfaction to accomplishing our goals and imagine that accomplishment is at the root of a sense of well-being, as though satisfaction will only be found in striving for the next thing. This is inherently false. These monks without career goals, we were told, had discovered the possibility of contentment in the smallest things of life. They had discovered the possibility of joy in the mundane.
Prof. Woodward’s remarks about monks and career goals called me to remember a statement from a friend of mine. He said, “I want a personal mission I can fulfill from a jail cell.” He wasn’t looking to be incarcerated, but he was looking for that calling which was essential, that didn’t depend on situations and circumstances. He was describing a vocation that could be answered anywhere in any situation, one that wasn’t conditioned, even by his ability.
In his letter to Timothy, Paul conveys a similar insight:
Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment; for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it; but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these.
Paul’s contentment was grounded in his identity as one who had died with Christ. Having been called out of himself and away from himself through an encounter with the risen Christ, he was free to live. He would write to the Christians in Rome:
We have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
Paul didn’t have a bucket list as much as he had already kicked the bucket and discovered a world of life with Christ as a result of it. Perhaps the reason that the monks have no career goals is because the goal of their lives is already achieved.
Pr. Jim +
Sept. 28, 2016
Rev. James A. Wetzstein serves as one of our university pastors at Valpo and takes turns writing weekly reflections.
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- “HELP!”
- “Some Lent!”
- (Your vocation here) of people
- A Point of Privilege
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- Better Together
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- Carrying the COVID Cross
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- Finding Words for Times Like These
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- Holy Week: The aid station late in the semester
- Hopes & Dreams vs Life in the Wilderness
- How glad we’ll be if it’s so
- I almost slipped
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- In praise of plans B … C … D …
- In Praise of Skeptical Disciples
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- Is there such a thing as being too forgiving?
- It’s a Three Day Weekend!
- It’s In the Bag
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- Killing off our future selves
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- Let us work for real wellness in our communities
- Life Is a Highway
- Lilies and leaves and whatever else is beautiful
- Living in the Present
- O Lord, you know I hate buttermilk
- Of Fear and Failure
- On Christian Unity: When we’re not one big happy church
- On the Bucket List
- Overwhelmed
- Pray and Let God Worry
- Preparing for the world to be turned rightside up
- Recovering from an Epic Fail
- Reformation calls for examination
- Remembering among the forgetful
- Seeing beauty in brokenness
- Signs of Love
- Starting Small
- Still in the storm
- Taking a Break from the Relentless
- Talking ourselves into it
- Thankfulness leads to joyfulness
- The Art of Holy Week
- The Funny Business of Forgiveness
- The Greatest of These is Love
- The Magi: Exemplars of Faith and Learning
- The Power of Small Conversations
- The Power of Taking a Sabbath
- The Spiritual Gift of Hindsight
- This can’t be done alone
- To be known
- You will be in our prayers this summer of 2020
- Ventures of which we cannot see the ending
- We had hoped
- What do you do with your anger?
- What is your base reality?
- What to do after you find your voice
- What to do on the day after
- What we know and what we don’t know
- When bad things happen
- When joy and sadness live together
- When the promise of resurrection is hard to believe
- When you offer up your broken cup
- Where God will be found
- Where is the good shepherd carrying you?
- Wilderness Journeys
- Year-end time management: Keeping the main thing the main thing
- Your Valpo roots will help you grow into your future