I have a personal mission statement: To be an instrument of peace, through the tenets of courtesy, integrity, self-control, perseverance and indomitable spirit. It’s what I tell people if they ask. It’s in my bio on our business web site. It’s what I think about every day.
God is with me, but more, God is within me, giving me existence.
Let me dwell for a moment on God’s Life-Giving Presence
in my body, my mind, my heart, and in the whole of my life.
It took a few years of piddling around with a personal mission statement before I hit upon that one a couple of years ago. The first versions sounded all human-development-y and socially-conscious-y and personal achievement-y. They had good sentiments but they weren’t as authentically from my heart as they needed to be. They weren’t what drove me.
I was reading the Prayer of St. Francis, with which I was well familiar, and it hit me: “Yes, that’s what I’m about! Fostering peace in the world! How simple!” It’s been the yearning in my heart since I was a kid in the midst of volatile circumstances. It’s what has pained me when I’ve been in the midst of actions of fear and hurt happening. It’s what I want in my own life, and I want to be able help bring that to others and to the world.
So, OK, peace. What about the rest of that stuff in there? Well, I’ve spent the past 25 years practicing and teaching Taekwondo, and those are it’s five tenets, what our practice is ultimately all about, what we seek to develop through our practice and bring to our lives. It seems appropriate to be cognizant of living these out each day and in that, still, to help bring peace, versus, say, simply make a million bucks (not that it wouldn’t be cool to make a million bucks; maybe that needs to be in my mission, too).
By God’s grace I was born to live in freedom,
Free to enjoy the pleasures created for me.
Dear One, grant that I may live as You intended,
with complete confidence in Your Loving Care.
Shortly upon waking this morning, thinking of what I am grateful for and of living a day in accord with my mission, I had the flash-thought of “possibility.” I am to live in a way that is open to and steps toward my possibilities, of what I might become and of what I might do in the world — of what God might have me become and have me do in the world. And what do you know? I load the Ignatian Examen app on my phone and read today’s Presence element (the first italicized prayer inserted earlier in this post). Life-Giving-Presence is all about ongoing creation, newness, growth, bringing about the possibilities.
My mission: To be an instrument of peace and to live my possibilities. Hmmm. That might work, yes?
We all need to take time out from our daily chores;
We know that our bodies need a rest.
When we come into Your Presence
our hearts and minds are refreshed, our spirits lifted.
I thank God for these moments we have spent together and for any insights I may have been given.
Be Cool to the Pizza Dude 