Searching at the Library for a book to help me finish my career portfolio, I picked up this little book called "The Path Creating your Mission Statement for Work and Life" by Laurie Beth Jones. Having taken some workshops before on mission statements being something you could write on a T shirt I wondered what her approach would be. Her first key concept seemed to be that a mission statement acts as both a harness and a sword -harnessing you to what is true about your life and cutting away the false."Having a personal mission statement can help you make decisions in both your work and home . Knowing our personal mission statement is the best career insurance you can have, because once you are clear about what you were put here to do, then "jobs" become only a means toward your mission, not an end in themselves." You get the feeling you she knows people are skim reading for the good stuff because she starts chapter one with ;
Three elements of a Good Mission Statement...
1. A mission statement should be no more then a single sentence long.
2.It should be easily understood by a twelve year old
3.It should be able to be recited by memory at gunpoint.
I thought about some Mission statements of people service agencies I has seen and they were several pages long. Pretty but not exactly memorable. This portfolio course was suggesting we have one and my hand in date was looming. Not exactly gunpoint but enough of a reason to recognize the book was a "gift" to help me get there. Some days the Universe as Oprah calls it speaks to you in a really loud voice and trucking off to church I was still thinking about what my statement would be. Today was the feast of Christ the King and the readings for the day covered those familiar verses on how in feeding the hungry and clothing the naked and visiting those sick and in prison we indeed do this to Christ himself..something strongly held by folks like Mother Theresa and similar personal heroes. The homilist pushed us to take this a step further and realize that we all had a final exam. If we all knew the question on our final exam wouldn't we want to be preparing for it. "What have you done for the least of these." Martin Luther is waving frantically from the back of the room....justification by faith .....great Martin but what do you do with this idea that if we don't take care of the poor, the hungry, the naked and the prisoner Christ might not give us a high mark on our finals.I stuck Martin back in his box and tried to concentrate on the rest of the sermon. Its kind of hard to refute key essential texts. Okay rapid self assessment ." Well spent my life working with handicapped kids,( which I got paid for ) alright I stuffed some hampers at the food bank, I fed the homeless once that time at the downtown center, we give to charitable organizations ,I want to go visit seniors, maybe I should send a letter to my Mom, and there is a woman's prison in town. I could kind of see myself with some kind of sketchy list, not bad but was it Final exam material? So I get a bare pass, but what if I really wanted to focus my whole life to answering this question well. What if I want to Ace the exam. What if there is a step A and a step B.What if because the directions for helping the poor etc are there not just to get an A on some end of life Golden Gate Gold Card but is about living and having a quality of life that has value now. I want to be able in my final reflections to have a sense that my life has value. That I my I was a significant other in the life of my family and community. That I could truly rest in peace knowing that I lived for more people then just myself..yet find my true self in sharing the grace and blessings I have received with others. So a step towards this would be? A Mission statement . Not just for the front of my career portfolio but for the rest of my life. If life is divided up into sections like a pie, I could easily be in my last quarter.If there was ever a time I needed to have a Mission statement that would give some focus to my life it would be now. So what would it be.Understandable by a twelve year old did not work for "lift up the hands that hang down". Feed the hungry,cloth the naked , visit the sick and prisoner wasn't bad...after all I didn't exactly come up with the idea. It was a part of what I wanted to own but it wasn't distinctly me.Maybe there is a way I could build some writing into the "visiting "part .What about...Bring Hope and healing...no what about Share Hope and Healing...yes that says it.I could put that on the front of a career portfolio.So here is the first Blog on Sharing Hope and Healing . Well at least until I get to chapter two of The Path ..
