As I See It

by Fr. Vin

Travel Plans

Tomorrow morning I’m off to Minnesota for five days.  I’ve been invited by the leaders of St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville (a Benedictine monastery) to spend the week there to help them to learn about their strengths.  I thought I’d share this with you so that you can know that some of the things we’ve been doing here in Our Lady of Grace are having an impact elsewhere, and that some of the things that might seem new and unfamiliar here are becoming widespread in our church all over the country.  So far in our parish the ministry staff, the Pastoral Council, and about 30 other parishioners have learned about their strengths in a shorter version of what I’ll be doing for the monks and the university faculty at Collegeville.

Here’s how it happened.  At the end of last summer some of the leadership of both the monastery and the university in Collegeville were participants in a seminar for senior leaders that Gallup sponsored.  Part of the seminar was given over to Gallup’s research on the effect of knowing one’s strengths.  The participants from St. John’s (including the prior, who is the second-in-command to the abbot; the vocation director; and some faculty) thought that this could be so helpful to them that they asked Gallup for further training.  The only thing was, Gallup doesn’t do that sort of training (except for business staffs where the whole organization is their client).  But my name came to mind to a couple of the leaders, since I had been through Gallup’s training and was certified by them as a coach, so they asked me if I’d think about going out to St John’s.  (Minnesota in January: What a perk!  The average daily high temperature there in January is 22^o; the average low is 4 ^o.)

I’ll tell you more about the trip when I get back.  Now, I want to talk about Gallup’s research on strengths that was so attractive to the people from St. John’s that they agreed to fly me out there for a week.  Here’s the story.  Over the past twenty years a few people noticed that something was missing in psychology.  Psychologists had spent a century studying what was wrong with people, and more-or-less assuming that “what was right” was simply the opposite of “what was wrong.”  A few people suspected that was a dubious assumption and started studying human excellence in its own right.  The movement became known as “positive psychology,” and it’s had quite a career.  Part of that growing field involved the study of people who displayed excellence in its many forms – from arts to business, from pastoring to surgery, from housekeeping to professional basketball, from stockbroking to soldiering.  The researchers found some surprising things:

• That there are patterns of talent that differ from person to person;

• That excellence in any activity depends on skill and knowledge and effort, but mostly on talent;

• That people often don’t know what their greatest talents are; and

• That we’re happiest and most satisfied with our lives when we get to use our talents every day.

The researchers also found that just about every culture around the world encouraged people to find happiness and fulfillment by doing just the wrong thing.  Instead of focusing on talents, most people were taught to work on fixing their areas of non-talent, their weaknesses.  But that doesn’t lead to happiness, and it doesn’t lead to excellence.  Satisfaction and near-perfect performance – in everything from housekeeping to basketball – comes from refining and using one’s talents.

So a lot of work has been done recently on helping people to identify their talents.  For religious people this makes a great deal of sense, since we believe that the Holy Spirit is the source of our talents and that the Spirit gives different talents to different people in order to build up the Body of Christ.  Gallup has become one of the largest worldwide resources for the discovery of talents, and it makes its tools available to church leaders and to congregations.   That’s how I came to be headed to Minnesota tomorrow.

After I come, back I’ll be offering another three-week workshop on talents here in Our Lady of Grace.  It will be on Monday evenings, February 4, 11, and 18, 7:30pm to 9:00pm.  You can register in the Parish Office to experience a shorter version of what I’ll be doing with the monks and faculty at St. John’s.  Information is on the following page. Think of it as a gift to yourself to begin Lent (which starts February 6).  Until next week, peace.

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