Pat III: Carolyn on Living a Life Uncommon

“Lend your voices only to sounds of freedom

No longer lend your strength to that which you wish to be free from

Fill your lives with love and bravery

And you shall lead a life uncommon”

  Jewel, Life Uncommon, from the album “Spirit” 

Once, I received a phone call while still working a soul-crushing corporate job.  Somewhere along the way, I had signed a petition and listed my work number as my contact.  That phone call was the thrill of my life. The young woman on the phone told me that,she had done Teen Service Week some years before, “Only once,” she said, “ but it changed my whole life.”  

She had discovered that she wanted to work for justice in the world. She told me she was living her calling and that she went to college with the goal of working on behalf of people who are poor and marginalized and was working at a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) which had sponsored the petition. She said that she had seen my name and needed very much to thank me, to thank TSW, for helping her discover her life-path, the truth of her unique vision and voice. Because she had been open to the experience of TSW, she realized how to live a "Life Uncommon." 

There are teens who are so deeply moved at a primal level by their individual discoveries that they find the depth and breadth of their own singular Truth. These young men and women have made a connection with the pure heart and essence of what, in the end, makes us human. Teen Service Week can be a journey of fundamental Becoming, founded upon each person's own experience and the discernment of what that knowledge, that Truth, might bring.  

I have seen young men and women, fall deeply in love with the lived experience that they can be a force for good in the world. Vatican II referred to it as the “Call to Holiness”; Gandhi called it Satyagraha, Soul-force or Love-force.  By any name, it is a power only discovered within, unique to each human being. Once discovered it is difficult to ignore because it is as natural as having brown eyes and as insistent as hunger. 

St. Augustine wrote, “Why climb the mountains or go down into the valleys of the world looking for Him that dwells within us?”  This wisdom is akin to the spiritual concept found in the Sanskrit word Namasté: 

“The Divine within me recognizes and honors the Divine within you. We are one.”  

It is that Light, that Namasté, that TSW encourages us to discover. For any human being, it is the discovery, acknowledgement and acceptance of the spark of the Divine within each of us that enable us to “fill our lives with love and bravery.”  A Life Uncommon means to take our own lived experience and the inner knowledge that we have truly, keenly earned and move with it into a world that rarely affirms the “better angels of our nature.”  Because TSW affords people the freedom to grow and question, to experience and discern, we find that we are the light of the world.

In the stillness and beauty of the prayer room, with others present, but involved in their own personal reflection, the light of love, prayer, and community flickers gently.  

And hearts expand.  

Like other adults down through the years, I have been entrusted with the great privilege and serious responsibility to accompany young men and women through some very deep and powerful hours. In some cases I can name the very moment when another being’s humanity spoke directly to mine.  This is a rare and sacred thing.  Being present at the moment a person takes their first steps in the discovery of their most personal Yes, their most precious Light - of acknowledging their vast capacity for love and bravery - is a crucial moment of awakening. It speaks to one’s fundamental nature of genuine beauty and compassion. 

This is a solemn, precious, and mystical moment, before which I am deeply humbled.  With gentleness, respect, and with the aid of grace, we guide and support the young man or woman into burgeoning adulthood and self-realization.  These moments of awe and accompaniment take the form of deep and companionable silence; asking questions that help the person to clarify, identify, and interpret their feelings; encouragement to speak of the revealed song of their own true hearts.

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Every message of childhood books and movies commands us: be yourself. Discover who you are and accept it, embrace it. Discover your fate and live it.  

Commercials too, reinforce that message: be an individual. Step out from the pack. Buy our stuff and you will be extraordinary.  

Our faith also instructs us to love the poor as God does:  feed the hungry; clothe the naked; heal the sick; visit the imprisoned.  

In "Life Uncommon," singer Jewel concludes, to live, we must give to live. 

Teen Service Week brings the revelation to many participants that all of these instructions can be joined into a personalized harmony.  There is a place for each of us in it all.   Maybe we find our path in high school, maybe in college, maybe even in the simple relationships we have with others.  We may not know how just yet, but oh, the glory of it, and the possibility!

The young woman working for the NGO discovered her Light on TSW and used the wisdom gained to do the work of ultimate courage: to act according to her nature as she understands it to be.   

It was revealed to me that maybe I don’t need a soul-crushing job when I can follow my calling, follow my truth, follow the idioms of my childhood. 

Maybe, because I have been awed by the love, beauty and compassion of this newly embraced spirit, I can be of service to the world, to God, to my own true nature.  

A Life Uncommon, indeed.