Notes for Leaders
Article 8
A review of life
To summarise the last three articles
(1) Every man is a unique individual called by God to fulfill a unique and irreplaceable role in the history of the world.
(2) Commonsense says I’ve got to try to find out what this means in practical terms for myself.
(3) Also I must respect every other person – no matter how difficult that be.
The Vatican Council gave us a few clues on what to look for.
1. We were all asked to share in God’s work of creating.
As Y.C.W.s we should be doing this at work.
The results of our work should be:
Joy in achieving what is produced
Joy in co–operation with workers all over the world
Joy in sharing in the evolving development of creation
Joy in working with God.
2. We were all asked to share in God’s work of loving.
We are invited to love our God and to know His love in return.
We are invited to love our neighbour as ourself.
3. We were all asked to share in God’s work of Redemption.
We will talk more of this in a later article.
These past three articles we have just summarised have been pretty heavy, holy and theoretical.
What does it mean for the ordinary Y.C.W. leader? Well first of all we will start with you as an individual. How many can you think of dividing your life up?
e.g. there is work – home – leisure
If you think about it you are dividing your life up into the places you live it in.
There is working – sleeping – leisure
Here you divide your life up into parcels of time.
A half hour spent with a pen and paper would be very useful to you at this point. If you just read on then you are sort of cheating – besides you will work it out better yourself than you will by reading my suggestions.
The point of this exercise is to give us all a chance to think a bit more deeply about our own lives – where we are going – what are our priorities – how we are managing to get it all together. If we believe that God is needing us then we have to believe in ourselves and in our need to grow and be formed. If we have done our pen and paper work we will now have in front of us a whole lot of aspects of our life that will have question marks on them as far as we are concerned.
Could we now try to write down in some sort of order the things in our life that are calling for action as we see them. I will put down a few but I ask that you try to work them out yourself – use my list only to give you a start.
e.g. (1) family
Relationship with Dad – not very good.
Board – I don’t pay enough
Time – I’m never home with the family together.
(2) body
smoke too much – drink too much
Need to play some sport
(3) Relationships at work.
(4) Brain
Don’t read much.
Need to read newspaper – understand things happening in the world.
Don’t know geography
(5) Relationship with girlfriend/boyfriend.
(6) Money.
And so it could go on. If you spend a little while you will find you can fill a few pages with things that are questions to you in your life. Don’t get upset because you are getting too many down. You’ve got a long time to work on them and besides the headings you are putting down are going to really help you in your work as a Y.C.W. leader with the Y.C.W. members.
Now go back over your pages of notes on your life and work out a couple of objectives.
e.g. you might think about (4) Brain. And you might think I have been left school two years now and
I haven’t really grown much since then. I turn over the T.V. if a serious programme comes – I only read the sports and the funnies – I don’t understand the difference between the Senate and the House of Representatives – and if I was asked where Pretoria was I wouldn’t know whether to say Europe or South America.
OBJECTIVE: This year I will try to grow in this aspect of life so that I will understand current affairs and be able to discuss them intelligently.
MEANS:
(1) buy a decent size map of the world to hang in my bedroom that I will look at every night to learn a bit more geography.
(2) have a yarn with people who are the full bottle on social affairs and get ideas on programmes to listen to on the wireless or T.V.. plus simple books to read.
(3) Make effort to read one current affairs article before reading sports and funnies.
You now have one OBJECTIVE and have worked out three things you can do to begin working towards this objective. This will give a sense of purpose in this aspect of your life and you will find that you don’t just continue to drift in this department of life. You will be excited with your success.
As you get further along you will want to review the objectives you have set yourself. Are they just selfish – or are you recognising your vocation of living your life for others. Are your objectives things that will get you more money, more prestige, or more power – or are they things that will help you serve others better and be a better Christian person? What would the people you work with, or your family, or your Y.C.W. group be likely to suggest as objectives for you if you were to ask them? And of course most importantly what do you think God would be likely to suggest as an objective for you for the next six months?
Don’t lose the paper you have used for this exercise. It will be able to be added to regularly and will be a great help to you in reviewing your life. It will also be very helpful in increasing your awareness of what is happening in your life. This will be of assistance to you also for the “Happenings” section of your general meeting.
Finally a word on the sharing in creation and sharing in loving articles. These two aspects are very important areas of life and should be on our paper under one heading or another. It is important for ourselves and for others to understand something of the meaning and dignity of work – something of the joy it should give to the worker.
Unfortunately often times work doesn’t work that way. It can be a drudge and a dehumanising boring parody of what work should be. It will be important for the workers to analyse their work situation and work for change at work. But it is important first that we should first get the vision clear of what work was meant to be.