In Forgetting Ourselves On Purpose: Vocation and the Ethics of Ambition, Brian Mahan speaks of “moments of recruitment.” These “moments” can occur during any season of life, but they typically take place when we are young. Before we have been taught to let go of our “youthful idealism,” moments of recruitment are those moments when we see a need, a social injustice, or a cause we would like to champion. They occur when we still believe that we can make a difference in the world. Over time, however, due to the cautioning of well-meaning family members and adults to whom we look for wisdom, we begin to see the world and the potential for positive change in more “realistic” ways.
Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Workers Movement, describes a moment of recruitment during her childhood: “I’m sitting with my mother, and she telling me about . . . children like me who don’t have enough food – they’re dying. I’m eating a doughnut, I think. I ask my mother why other children don’t have doughnuts and I do . . . I don’t remember her words, but I can still see her face; it’s a face of someone who is sad, and resigned . . . . Most of all, I remember trying to understand what it meant—me eating a doughnut, and lots of children without food at all . . . I don’t remember my words, I just remember holding the doughnut up and hoping she’d take it and give it to someone, some child . . . . I didn’t eat that doughnut! I put it down on the kitchen table. I asked her if God knew somebody nearby . . . . I don’t remember asking her that, asking her how we might enlist God in this effort; but she says I kept talking about God and Jesus and feeding the hungry with the doughnuts, until she told me . . . please . . . to stop!”
Have you ever had a moment of recruitment? A doughnut plan? You’ve probably had more than one. You may have even had one recently. Look at Thomas Merton’s statement again. What is preventing you from more fully living for the thing you want to live for? What can you do today to more fully live for the thing you want to live for?
There is a power working on the inside of us that will enable us to accomplish far abundantly more than we can ask or even imagine. — Ephesians 3:20
Rev. Dr. Jacob Kines
Executive Minister
The Community Church of Vero Beach