Mission and Identity

Those who know me, know I like sports.  I played sports in school and long after school was history for me.  My two daughters played sports and I loved that almost as much as playing myself.  I have been involved in watching and supporting college sports for a very long time and don’t plan to give it up any time soon.  I will put up with professional sports, but I don’t like them as much as the younger kids and college athletes.  Of course, that leaves aside the elite athletic programs that rake in millions on their men’s basketball and football programs.  I will save that tirade for some other time!

“March Madness,” as the annual big-time fling for college basketball is called, is a sports’ junkie’s heaven.  I know it inevitably involves many of those big-time programs that I just dissed.  But there are other good stories that come from it and I want to share one of those stories, because it has lessons beyond sports, which I want to develop.  The story comes from the pen of Michael Murphy, who is a director of a Catholic Intellectual Heritage Center at Loyola University in Chicago, a Jesuit institution.

Loyola has had some very good basketball teams over the years.  But they probably are more widely famous for Sister Jean of the Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary religious order.  She is the one-hundred-year-old nun who sites courtside in a wheelchair and cheers on the team.  In fact, she is the team chaplain!  What intrigued me about Murphy’s article was not its focus on his university’s successful basketball team, but what he chose to give focus.

Basically, what Murphy concentrates on is the issue of culture.  This intrigues me because I have written a fair amount about culture.  He wants to chart a connection between the basketball culture and the Jesuit culture of the university, which ties in Catholic philosophy of education.  In the larger picture he gives me ideas about how spirituality in general should create a culture to counter the secular culture we all grow up in this country.  In fact, the Loyola basketball team finished the 2018 season in the “Final Four,” meaning they were one of four teams at the end who were vying for the national championship.  The slogan of that team was “created by culture.”  

I don’t want to be cynical, but rather try to mine whatever nuggets of insight I can get from this story.  One direction Murphy heads that I appreciate is in the direction of discernment.  I know how important discernment is in the Jesuit tradition.  Discernment is what spiritual folks do when they are seeking God’s desire in some matter.  It is what spiritual directors help us do.  For Quakers we suggest a clearness committee—a group of folks who sole purpose is to help is find God’s desire for some issue.

I like Murphy’s way of putting it.  He says, “In discernment, we locate the right path against the allure of so many others; and we find that the beacons of faith and reason (and ethics and justice) exist precisely in order to help locate the best way forward.”  Rightly, he sees the role of faith and reason that Jesuits so consistently use.  In effect, he says Jesuits use both their brains and their hearts---reason and faith.  That seems sensible to me.  

Murphy then quotes the Loyola coach who talks about a “right way” to do things.  Murphy opines that the right way creates a culture.  He adds, “In short, doing things in the right way is a philosophy; and philosophies both create cultures and, in return, are sustained by them.”  I would agree.  I also think Quakers create a culture by doing it “their way,” which I trust is also a right way.  Other groups do it their way and our secular culture does it its way.  But not all cultures lead to God, wisdom and the good life, which I envision to entail a commitment to love and justice.

Murphy does many other things, but he comes to a point that is huge for me.  He suggests that a culture embodies both the mission and identity of an organization.  I believe he is correct.  Identity and mission are basic to both individuals and communities.  They are perspectives on who am I and where am I going in life.  Culture binds a bunch of individuals into a community (a team, if you will) which head in the same direction.  If it is a spiritual community---Quaker, Jesuit or otherwise---we know who we are and we know we are headed into relationship with God.

And we know that relationship with God implies a relationship with each other in the community and with every other living human on the planet.  Furthermore, it implies a relationship with all of God’s creation---which leads to appropriate eco-sensitivity and action.  In other words, we are against personal sin and ecological sin.  

Culture is like the air we breathe.  It is the assumptions we make about our life and work together.  If culture is the air we breathe, it is not a difficult move to link it to the Spirit.  In all the classical languages, spiritus is translated “wind, air or breath.”  A spiritual culture shapes our identity and forms our mission.  That is exciting and it is life-giving.

It is where I want to be to do things the right way around here.