The difference between doing and being.
Someone once asked me if I had ever done anything else apart from being a priest. The answer is ‘Yes’. I had a very wise bishop who strongly encouraged me to go and get a regular 9 to 5 job so that I might have some sense as to how the secular world ticks and turns.
At 17 years of age, I successfully applied for a job as a tour guide in a winery. It was a marvellous opportunity to learn about the wine industry and it taught me a lot about people. I stayed for 4 years and remember my time fondly.
Then off I toddled to college and now here we are several decades later. My inquirer made an incisive observation, perhaps without realising it, and the observation is this.
That there is a big difference between doing and being. I did the job at the winery but that is not the same as being a priest. A priest is something you are and is not necessarily defined by how a cleric fills their days. There are actually a tiny minimum of things that I am licensed to do that unlicensed folk are not permitted to do. In fact, if you add up the amount of time that I spend doing exclusively 'priesty things’ it’s less than a day a week. Everything else could easily and competently be done with much more alacrity than someone other than me.
And this difference between doing and being, this sense of vocation is not limited to clerical collar-wearing folk. I strongly believe that farmers, medical people and those who work in the funeral industry, (to name but a few) all know the difference between ‘doing’ and ‘being’. It’s a subtle but important difference and one that I rejoice in everyday.
Esse Quam Videri -is a much used Latin atin motto meaning to be rather than to seem