Guardians Meeting
October 15, 1996
PARAVOCATION
I am impressed. I am impressed because I am here at the
Guardians Meeting and getting a chance to speak to the Guardians Meeting.
I remember the first time I heard about the Guardians: The image that I
had was that these were rich guys. This was the image. And I had no problem
with rich guys because my father spent most of his life trying to be a
rich guy. I used to carry on, after I got older, an imaginary conversation
with him about this business of being a rich guy. And I would ask him,
in my imagination, what would you do if you were a rich guy? And I could
imagine him answering, "I wouldn't do anything -- I'd be rich"'
Being rich doesn't have to do with doing anything -- it has to do with
being rich, I was impressed. I was impressed with a bunch of people who
really didn't do anything except be rich, who were going to come and work
with the movement, who did a lot of things, and were rich.
I began to work those who called themselves Guardians
and my image changed. They were obviously not rich guys. A number of times
I got hit up to buy them a beer. They convinced me that they were not rich
guys. Either that, or they were extremely stingy. . . which obviously wasn't
going to do us any good anyway. So their appeal must lie in some other
direction, other than being rich guys. I began to receive the image that
they were those whose avocation was the work of the movement -- sort of
a sideline; a sort of deeply engaging hobby. But that image shifted rather
quickly. I began to encounter Guardians in this building, and I began to
encounter people who put in long, long hours, who ate nonGuardian
food, that we serve when Guardians come and there's not a scheduled meeting
then the real stuff comes out of the refrigerator, and
they seemed to exist on this fare with no problem. But then I had an amazing
encounter. I went out to do a Consult down in Cano Negro, a great place
-- down in the jungles of Latin America, and there were many, many Guardians
there.
As we worked together, I made a startling discovery. It
was not the discovery that the Guardians put in long hours, for that was
to be expected, or without sleep -- that was to be expected, or sort of
lived off the land -- that was to be expected. And not even that they cared
about the village. Hopefully, that was why they were there: because they
cared about the village. But as I worked in that Consult, I received a
new gestalt of my holy spirit with the Guardians, and what dawned on me
was that the Guardians cared. They simply cared. Cared period. Cared profoundly.
Cared passionately,
Cared with their entire lives. Cared with their very being.
I realized that I sort of smugly and unconsciously told myself a story
that my care was of a different quality than the care of the Guardians.
I didn't set out to do this, but it had happened, and I discovered that
there was no difference between my care and the care of the Guardians --
that it was the same care. It was not a different aspect of the same care.
It was not a different quality or a different quantity. It was the same
care. The care I experience for the future for the sake of mankind, for
the globe, for the life of the cities, for the welfare of those in the
villages came from the same deep well that the care of those who call themselves
Guardians came from. It was exactly the same care. My care and their care
was the same care. We didn't have two cares. There was one care, and in
that one care we both shared and participated. There was no difference
in the care. And it was not that the Guardians had achieved some kind of
bogus quality. The fact of the matter, as I discovered it, was that that
care had been there all along. There never had been a difference between
the deep abiding and profound care that impelled us into mission and impelled
us into ridiculous situations. There was no difference between that care.
So when I got a chance to address the Guardians Meeting, I was impressed.
I was impressed because I had another opportunity to talk with my colleagues
with colleagues who are profoundly members of the same
league that I saw myself as a part of.
I want to read to you a little bit from The Journal that's
past. The new Journal is on your plates. I was interested in looking at
the last three days, October 13, 14 and 15 in the Journal. It's very interesting.
The day that the Guardians Meeting started, the 13th, this is the Journal
reading: "What we do here will influence every part of the world."
Isn't that interesting? "What happens in every part of the world will
influence us, so we are faced by the most difficult problem of all, that
of man's dealing with his fellow, on a basis of mutual respect and good
will." That was the day we started this meeting. But then the journey
continues, doesn't it? And on the 14th of October, yesterday, the reading
was something like this:
"There was an uneducated man who asked me about something,
and I could not say a word in reply. I merely discussed the two sides of
the question and was at my wits end."
Does that sound a little bit like yesterday? But listen
to today.
"Moment by moment, I water it for fear its green
leaves fail. Night and day I tend it, but I get no wine. I would as soon
have briars and thorns, than I would wage war upon it and burn it all up,
unless it grasped me as its refuge and makes peace with me. Unless it makes
peace with me."
That's not bad. Somebody, maybe, created the old Journal
by plotting out the days of the Guardians Consult and then built the rest
of the Journal around it.
I was told not to take long, so I won't. I'm almost half
through now. I know a number of people have come up and said they told
me to take a very short time, and then they shrug their shoulders and said,
"However . . ." But in the Academy we learn to operate within
a time frame because the students are extremely physical with their displays.
To avoid being literally taken off the stage, you have to learn to get
it said quick and come back with illustrations.
This business of changing the world has caused me acute
embarrassment for most of the time that I've been with this body. Whenever
I am introduced to somebody, and my brother's around, and they ask me what
I do, my brother immediately pipes up, "Oh, he's saving the world."
And that used to embarrass me. But now when he says that, I just smile
and say, "That's right. I'm saving the world. What do you do?"
But that is not as smug as it sounds. There is a profound sense of pain
and sorrow in that saving the world business. I thought we could do a lot
things up here after I sort of made my little witness, confession. We could
read off what the task force who worked on the Guardians, and the Global
Servant Force said to the Guardians. Would you like to hear that? I mean
really. If you don't, we don't have to. I've got plenty of other good stuff
here.
The Guardians, whatever the Guardians are, is not an organization.
It crucial to the life of anybody who is interested in changing the world.`
The Guardians support and protect the flanks of the mission. The Guardian
addresses the Word in order to bring fulfilled living to others. The Guardian
offers no excuse for living life's journey in the struggle to fight for
humankind. The Guardian is an iron man, serving the globe at the local
level. The guardian uses first vocation to honor the establishment on behalf
of the mission. The Guardian cares for self through being an informed practitioner.
The Guardian symbolizes care through celebrating engagement in the world.
The Guardian corporately engages in building responsible global communities.
The Guardian demonstrates and uses methods of human development in all
situations. The Guardian maintains constructive objectivity on behalf of
the movemental vision and the priorities. The Guardian exposes self to
combat innocent suffering in the world. The Guardian bridges the 15%85%
gap. The Guardian catalyzes the participation needed to effect social change.
The guardian does necessary deeds. The Guardian uses his own expertise
as a resource to create future structure. The Guardian intentionally disciplines
his own life in order to give time, money and talent to advance the global
task. That's one way of talking about it.
I think another way is the term "paravocation",
We've struggled and wrestled with the image of paravocation for many years
now, and I was beginning to lose hope that we would ever begin to get hold
of some content underneath that Until last night, for an Academy celebration,
we went to a play. It was called, "Red Rover, Red Rover. That was
the funniest thing in the play -- the title. Did you see that play? It
was supposed to be a comedy, but what it was about was this man who longed
so desperately for community, that when his friends came over for dinner,
he contrived to make them stay. He let the air out of their tires on one
family and hid the car keys of another, and made sure that his car was
blocked by the car with the flat tire. And so he contrived to have these
other two couples stay over in his house -- they used the term, "sleep
over".
He lusted after community so deeply that he was willing
to forgive anything that went on, except, of course, not having a private
bath. He was not able to forgive that. But in the midst of this everybody
staying over, all kinds of insights and truths about the other two couples
began to come out. And it got revealed that the husband of every couple
had proposed in some fashion, to the wife of the other couple, and it got
clear that the wife of every couple was dissatisfied with her marriage
and one woman had been married to both of the other men in the scenario.
At the end, they all -- after tremendous struggle and all these revelations
coming out -- they all decided that they would stay together and form a
community.
The play addressed me how it is very true in the world
today. Human beings long deeply for community. However, we know that community
without mission is doomed to failure. And with your own lives in the midst
of your struggle with action what it means to be paravocation is to pass
over accomplishment into action. Somehow we have to find a way to get ourselves
clear that while things must be done that no human life will ever have
its significance proved to it by what it does.
A lot of my illustrations have to do with the Academy.
This is so I don't have to address anybody here personally, and also because
that is my most recent experience. There is a guy up there who said that
what he wanted to do was do something that would go on forever. He wanted
to do something that would go on forever, and he asked me about And I began
to reflect on it, and I asked him, "How many people in Pompeii were
sincere? How many people in Pompeii remained faithful to their wives? How
many people in Pompeii paid all their bills? How many people in Pompeii
were really loving individuals? How many people in Pompeii got up early
every morning and did all their chores? Nobody knows.
All they have is a few pots and a few lava-encrusted spoons.
And that's the truth about human existence. While all those things are
important in our struggle to be human, nevertheless, they do not last forever.
Our accomplishments, or our do's, are finite just as we are, and yet what
it means to be paravocated is to pass over accomplishment ... to go
beyond deeds into action. Action has to with the positing of care -- not
in deeds that show fruit but the positing of care the here and now without
any sense whether the fruits will ever be made known. When I think of this
kind of dynamic I think of the Foundation Trilogy by Asaac Asimov. In that
Trilogy there is a bunch of people who were living at the time of Imperial
Collapse. The Galactic Empire had collapsed. It was starting from the outside
and collapsing inward. Nobody else could see it.
Look around you. See how many motor cars we got in Imperial,
the Galactic Empire. What do you mean, it's collapsing? Things are going
great. They've never been better. But these few people said, "Nope.
Things are collapsing in the Galactic Empire." They tried to analyze
the trends of history. They tried to analyze what was going on and what
to do about it. You know what they discerned that they could do about it?
They discerned if things went on as they looked like they were going to
go on, that there would be 10,000 years of anarchy and chaos throughout
the whole Galactic Empire. So they set their lives to the task of reducing
the 10,000 years down to a thousand. And that was their task. To reduce
the 10,000 years of anarchy and chaos to only a thousand. That has something
to do with para~vocation, and it has something to do with going beyond
accomplishment into action into care.
Beyond deeds what means to be a paravocated human being
is to live on nothing other than your own decision to care -- to live not
on the fruits of your task, which if it is the task we set out to do we
will not see the final fruits of, but to live all your commitments and
your care. Passing over -- paravocation has something to do with passing
over from being mission to being the mission of being mission. Now this
is not just that I ran out of points and decided to say that. This is true.
It has to do with moving from being mission into being the mission of being
mission. It has a profoundly transparent category of paravocation. It has
to do with calling forth mankind to their vocation.
That the vocation of the paravocated human being is to
call forth local human beings into their vocation. to be a caller.
To be one who demands a response and gives the opportunity for people to
pick up their life's work. Now these people go through their lives laboring,
yet never doing their life's work. That is the fate of most of mankind.
And for me, when I talk about the tragic gap between the 15% and the 85%,
it's not that most of the 85% don't get a chance to live like Ozzie and
Harriet. I wouldn't wish that on anybody' What I sense is the tragedy of
it, is that they go through their lives laboring like animals, yet never
having the opportunity to do their life's work. Never having the option
to do their life's work. Never being able to do the work that they had
dedicated their lives to. Instead they labor and labor and labor unto death.
Being a paravocated human being has to do with crashing
into the situations where people labor without end, and presenting them
with the opportunity to do their life's work. That's why I think that Town
Meeting and Social Demonstration are such a big thrill around the world.
It's not that they're perfect and don't have any problems. Lord knows they've
got problems. But what it is, is when people encounter those things that
they encounter is the possibility to do their life's work. And what's what
somebody down in Gibson told me. She said, "I've figured out this
consult business." I said, "Oh, Lord. Please don't let her figure
out this consult business." She said, "I've figured out this
consult business. All you guys are doing is helping us do what we already
wanted to do. You aren't telling us anything new. We already wanted to
do these things. " "That's right. But you all weren't doing them,
were you?" She said, "No." And I said, "Do you know
why you weren't doing them? " She said, "No." "That's
the other end of this consult business. It's that you were not doing what
you always wanted to do, and you didn't know why you couldn't do what you
always wanted to do. That's the trick to it."
That's what it means to be paravocated. To call forth
mankind to do the incredible humanizing cycle of labor and labor and labor
without end, and give people a new option. Not to go through something
different, but to do in the midst of their labor their life's work. Finally,
paravocation, it seems to me, has something to do with passing over from
being a Guardian to Global Guardianhood. I think that has something to
do with grounding the dynamic of paravocation in any situation. It's like
one Guardian who is paravocated, you see all the Guardians -- you see the
Global Guardians. When you see Don Elliott or Brother Galbraith there,
you don't see those people, you see the Global guardians.
In the here and the now, all of the Global Guardians.
I mean the Japanese Global Guardians, the Korean Global Guardians, and
the African Global Guardians. There is only one Global Guardian -- it's
you and nobody else. There's only one Global Guardian and it's you, and
that one Global Guardian is all the Global Guardians at one time. It's
the whole dynamic, in fact, Global Guardianhood is a dynamic . It's really
not an organization, is it? Passing over from an organization to being
a dynamic. We are all paravocated. We are all called on to play the role
of Guardians in various situations. I've had to play the role of Guardian,
and when they first told me that I needed to go play the role of Guardian,
I said, "I'm not a Guardian. I live here. I wear a blue shirt."
They said, "So do they."
"Well, How can I go be a Guardian?'' Being a Guardian
is not being a member of an organization, it's a dynamic. It's a role in
history. It's a historical role. Historically the role of Guardian is the
role of he or she who has decided to take the investment that society has
made into their lives and return the investment. But not return the investment
to themselves -- return the investment to the society. If society invested
in your becoming an engineer, and you return the investment to society
by engineering a whole new society. It's society invested in you becoming
a doctor, and you return the investment by serving the ills of mankind.
By creating a whole new understanding of medicine in the local situation.
Being a Guardian is simply returning the investment. Those who have decided
to play the role of returning the investment, and all of us, at one time
or another, have been called on to return the investment that society has
made.
Called on to play that role -- we are all paravocated.
You are all in the same mission. You're all Guardians. You all have the
same path ahead of you and the same struggles within the task. And so when
I tell you once again that I am impressed, I'm not impressed because I
got a chance to come to the Guardians Meeting because I have been to Guardians
Meetings for the last ten years. I'm impressed because of all the good
champagne that we never seem to get up at the Academy.
Robert Shropshire