On Work

The standing joke in my family is that I don't work. The joke dates back a few years when I was working from home with a fairly flexible schedule. One day when my mother needed some help she called me, beginning the conversation with, "since you don't work...." Well there is some truth to this perception. What I do for a living is so enjoyable, it hardly seems like work. My job has virtually every element that I would have listed in the ideal job. As Director of Scripture Translations for the Canadian Bible Society I get to work with the greatest team of colleagues. I get lots of variety; from hosting workshops to supporting my fabulous team to performing quality assurance checks on translations. My job includes plenty of travel around the globe, sometimes to amazing and exotic locations where I get to meet the most wonderful people and hear all manner of beautiful languages. I have the satisfaction of knowing that what I do matters and has lasting value for people and the communities in which they live. Recently our office hosted 5 members of the Haitian Bible translation team. They are currently working on a Study Bible in Haitian Creole. Their work has been severly disrupted by the aftermath of the earthquake earlier this year. What a tremendous privilege to get to know these brilliant and dedicated Haitian pastors who care deeply for their nation and their people. It was so inspiring to hear them talk about the positive impact of the Scriptures they are translating in order to bring hope to people in their time of great distress. One of the team is a pioneer in the development and promotion of Creole as the national language of Haiti. All of them spoke of the important role that the translation of the Bible has played in the development of their language and in the spiritual life of their people. Here is part of a message sent by one of the team to let us know he got home safely. He says: "These past two weeks in Kitchener/Waterloo were very beneficial in different manners. Firstly, it was refreshing for the team to have to work for two weeks without having to face all the challenges we all know Haiti is going through these days. Secondly, in leaving Kitchener we feel more confident in our ability to go on and complete this project to the very end. Thirdly,it was such a great blessing for us to visit you all. We really enjoy your fellowship.  Thank you for your acceptance, patience, generosity and kindness to us. We all appreciate it so very much!" I get to do what I love, I get paid for it and people let me know how much they appreciate it. Can that really be called work?

Hart2Heart: On inefficient loitering

Hart2Heart: On inefficient loitering: "Most North Americans of my vintage tend to be goal oriented. It hadn't occured to me that there was any other way to be until we went to liv..."

On inefficient loitering

Most North Americans of my vintage tend to be goal oriented. It hadn't occured to me that there was any other way to be until we went to live in the Philippines. There we found that most people tend to put relationships above goals. A core value for most Filipinos is "Smooth Interpersonal Relationships (SIR)." It took me a while to get my head around this. When we started living in Asibanglan and learning Kalinga, a previously unwritten language, we set up an office where I could focus on the work of learning and analyzing the language. People would frequently stop by the office to visit - an interruption for me in my "work." One day a wise Kalinga friend observed that I was going about things all wrong. He suggested that the way to learn their language was not to sit in my office pouring over my notes and texts, but by going out and interacting with the people of the village. I knew I still had to do the former, but I tried to take his advice and do more of the latter. We were still pretty goal oriented because we had a job to do. Our primary assignment, the translation of Scripture, finally got done in spite of many interruptions and I think we learned something about SIR along the way. Then a couple of years ago I was at a conference where an Asian was invited to speak to a gathering made up of mostly western missionaries. He urged us westerners to get past our preoccupation with our goals and engage in some "inefficient loitering" for a change. Ginny and I hope to do a bit of that when we go to spend a month with our Kalinga "family" in the Philippines in January. I just learned another way of talking about this concept when we went to see "Eat, Pray, Love" last night. "Il dolce far niente" is how they talk about the sweetness of doing nothing in Italian. As I approach birthday #65 I hope to learn about "Il dolce far niente" and enjoy the warmth of being with the people I love more and more.