Holy Work

As part of the fellowship portion of my year working in Chicago, I attend weekly seminars in different nonprofits around the city. I attend with my fellow Princeton Fellows and with Fellows from U of C and Northwestern.

A couple of weeks ago we were at a competitive prep school catering solely to the students in one of the two neighborhoods my center serves. One of its founders, a former Catholic priest, spoke to us before letting the student tour guides take over. He was the best speaker we've had by far. He called us "wide-awake people," and it only took a couple minutes for me to realize he wasn't talking about the early hour. Towards the end of his remarks he reminded us (as if we needed reminding) that we wouldn't get rich doing this, and that we might not get recognition either. Instead, he said, we should remember that we are doing "holy work."

This wasn't the first time I had thought (or been forced to think) of my job in terms reminiscent of my eight years of Catholic Sunday school. I had a phone conversation towards the beginning of my time here with one of my high school friends, now teaching at a Montessori, about how I would probably learn a lot from my year but that teaching kids probably wasn't my vocation.

It was out of my mouth before I really thought it out. Luckily, she understood the term and the weight behind it.

It was true when I said it and it's still mostly true now. I don't think I can handle middle schoolers for longer than a year. I think I'm getting a crash course in special needs and mental health that I couldn't have anticipated (although despite the craziness, working these kids into my lesson planing is actually one of my favorite challenges). I think once the heat really and truly gets turned on our room is going to smell rank from November to April. I think this might not be the only time I have a lost voice and a sore throat.

Parts of it are addictive, though. Today on walkover one of my coworkers said, "You're tough. I was sure you'd be gone by now," and the other said, "I was just thinking the same thing." These are the same people who are trying to teach me some swag. I was honored (and legitimately touched) and walked around the rest of the day with an inflated sense of myself and my toughness. It's true that I've almost honed my very own Teacher Voice (the semi-parental voice that wields disappointment more lethally than threats) and that I've learned to brush off student comments about my clothes or my appearance with no more than a shrug or a quick, funny comeback. These things are addictive too because when I'm successful I'm teetering at the edge of something and not quite falling in. It's real adrenaline.

So back to "holy work." On my worst days I try not to wallow in it. (I try not to call anybody or vocalize my frustrations until I've figured out how to spin them into a good story. I drive home and I take a hot bath and I watch something on Netflix.) But it must be said that, no matter how I sell it to myself later, on those days it feels like the Peace Corps. Those are the days when this idea of "holy work," however self-aggrandizing it might seem to me on the other end, really helps. If I can put others first, even ahead of my own bad feelings, than I must be doing something good, even if it doesn't feel good. It might not be my vocation, but it's definitely not lost time either.

This week has been good. Last week was good. Still, when I Skyped with my best friend two nights ago and she told me awesome stories about her life in a job I would have no idea how to do (and probably wouldn't have the business mentality for anyway) in a city I still miss despite being completely enamored with this one, and about how the company car was going to pick her up and drive her to the airport to the morning, it took a lot of effort to re-affix this "holy work" ideal to my mind.

Maybe doing holy work isn't all that far removed from being a BAMF, Roommate J's favorite appellation for me in college (and the source of, actually, quite a lot of comfort). My favorite thing about being a BAMF is telling the story afterwards: THIS happened, so I did THIS, and then THAT, and what do you know. True BAMFitude is achieved only through uphill struggle. You can be a BAMF in the comfort of your college town, but you better trap a few cockroaches in mooncake boxes while your roommates are all shrieking bloody murder, you know? Put up or shut up.

You can do holy work anywhere too, but it has to cost you something.

You can put off finding your vocation to do it, and that can become part of it.

It might even toughen you up a little bit.

(Just make sure it doesn't swell your head.)