Gnostic Gems 136

"Your profession is a call to service."

Your profession is a call to service. It is more than a livelihood. It is a covenant between you and the universe. You both choose your profession and are chosen by it. Natural talents, acquired interests, life opportunities, and a felt response to the call for service dictate a person’s choice of profession. By virtue of your uniqueness at birth, you possess a set of talents more suitable for one occupation than another. These talents are your birthright. Of course, you may express your birthright in many different occupations or you may choose to ignore it completely. Talents are latent energies that cry out for expression. If you ignore your birthright, you will end up feeling frustrated and unfulfilled. Happiness is doing what you are fit by nature to do.

Some talents lead to the professions established by society. Other talents lead to vocations, manual labor, volunteer activities or artistic self-expression. Whatever our choice of application, our talents are bestowed upon us as an act of grace and we are accountable for their rightful use.

Clergy, medicine and law were the traditional professions. Presently, there are hundreds of additional professions, each with a specialized body of knowledge, each with a tailored program of preparation, each with a code of ethics, and each with a set of sanctions for good and bad behavior.

Every profession is a specialized facet of ALL THAT IS. All professions honor humankind by discovering and setting into motion possibilities that exist in the background of BEING. Professions have both a sacred and a secular dimension. The sacred dimension is occupied with the answer to the question, why do you practice your current profession? The secular dimension asks the question, how do you practice your profession? “Why” and “how” are the two most basic questions in any profession. “Why” is a spiritual question and “how” is a scientific question. “Why” asks for a statement of meaning and overall purpose. “How” asks for a statement of method.

The systems oriented health professional tries to overcome disorder and release the hidden potential in all things. He/she tries to establish peace where conflict reigns. This may take the form of a manager running a healthcare organization, a physician resisting disease, a teacher rebuking ignorance, or a social worker opposing the impact of poverty on a welfare family. In each case, the professional is armed with a body of specialized knowledge that can be used to achieve a higher systems order.

Leland Kaiser
(photo courtesy of PD Photo)