Work As Mission

The following is a presentation I gave a few years back. When I gave this talk to a full house of local business people and I was just starting my adventure at the National Scrip Center. I had no idea how true these words would be and how I had thought I came to this organization to do one thing and in the end, once I opened my heart to it and accepted it, the Lord brought me here for something completely different (this will be another story, at another time).

I share these thoughts at the start of a new year. I gave this talk at the start of a new adventure and a time of possibility and daily excitoment. The team that I inherited and those I brought to the adventure of the NSC were good people, hard working people and I gain strength even now thinking of their integrity, care and spirit. Together we went from $300 million to over $500 million a year in sales in less than two years, generating over $51 million for charities, churches, nonprofits –working with over 20,000 organizations. Over 8 million people benefited from our work.

A sharing from my past, that brings joy into my current life. I hope you find joy in it as well. May 2015 allow you to open your heart and mind to the possible.

Catholic Business Professional’s Breakfast – January 2002

Speaker, David Carrithers, CEO & Steward – National Scrip Center

“Few souls understand what God would accomplish in them if they were to abandon themselves unreservedly to Him and if they were to allow His grace to mold them accordingly.”-- St. Ignatius Loyola

Thank you for inviting me to share with you. Santa Rosa is a small community – one filled with history. Kristy, my wife, joined the Santa Rosa New Comers Club and the average tenure is 35 years plus for the members! That tells you a lot – people come here and stay.

My Talk is about being a soldier for Christ in a button down and khakis. That it is our mission as Catholic Business Leaders, our duty to bring the principals of our faith into the workplace. That we must trust in God and accept where he has taken us. That so many books, so many business people believe “win at all cost” or “someone must lose so I can win!” This is not in the spirit of what Jesus told us, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself” and “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them…” We must bring in an era of Christian principals and beliefs in business. Not forced, not contrived, not unsympathetic. That those we lead, those we manage are craving, thirsting for a higher purpose, for a spirit and principal in what we do with our days, with our work and words.

We see this coming out in business leadership books, or motivational players like Tony Robins and “power of your own mind” seminars – people’s willingness to spend thousands of dollars to hear basic messages, etc. that talk about what our mission should be. If people gain a positive insight or thought through these programs and books– great! But I have found that many seem to find almost a religious experience in these programs. That they gain a sense of connection to something more in life, beyond their own space of existence. And it is sad to think, that the world so wants a higher purpose – but they are not willing to listen to the inner calling. To go where God sends them, not fighting it but embracing it. That a shield of fear is built and we harden to the this inner calling of meaning, value of purpose.

My Early Journey In Faith

My adult faith began to take true shape as a young adult when I was 16. God brought me to a challenge, for a reason, and I called upon him to help and did so. I set an appointment and went to see my local Catholic Priest about “a calling” – I put on my best blue suit and stood at the door of the rectory waiting to see the “hip Priest” (had Peace signs on his vestments) Father Bill.

As I walked in Fr. Bill was running out and he said, “Hey lets talk while I take care of something and I might need your help…” Without thinking I climbed into his green Dodge Dart, I did not question why and where God was sending me I just went. In short order, I asked the simple question – so where are we going?

Fr. Bill revealed to me that a young Mom of 31 had taken her own life, in her house with her 2 little ones in the room. She swallowed a bunch of pills, put her head down on the bed and was gone. We walked into a world of craziness. Grown Police Officers crying, as a little 5-year-old boy yelling, “Mommy isn’t getting up from nap time.” I had seen dead bodies before, but never in someone’s home, never in the moments after life had left, never in the whirlwind of anger and grief. Always in the quite and calm of a funeral home. I helped get the body ready for last rites with Fr. Bill.

The next thing I knew Fr. Bill asked me to go across the street to this women’s Mothers house and help with the family. I left to do as he asked. I stood out side, on the cold October evening, looking up at the house thinking, “Run, run, this is more than you can handle, your only 16. Run.” Instead, my feet pulled me forward and in I went – on the tip of my mind was the thought “God only sends us where he knows we can help, trust God for sending me here there is a reason.”

As I walked in the Husband of the women was standing alone in the Kitchen of the house, and at that exact moment he pulled the kitchen Cabinets out of the wall – all the plates and glass came crashing down. I walked up, and hugged him. I took his hand and brought him into the family room with all her family and got down on my knees and said, “lets pray for your loved wife and daughter Cathy and ask for her to be received into heaven. Her spirit died sometime ago and now the physical body has ended living as well. We must pray for her soul and the family left behind.” We ended up say many Our Fathers and Hail Mary’s that night.

When Fr. Bill walked in, he was amazed. When everyone asked who I was, he said “our newest Novitiate” – and later he said that he could see that the spirit was with me, and I was doing just what he would have and said just what he would have.

I did not question, I accepted what God put before me and dove in. This led me on a path to looking at the life of being a Catholic Priest, and specifically a Jesuit Father. I started the journey and I became an Associate of the Society of Jesus. Here too, I came to realize my calling was one of being a husband and Dad. That it would be more difficult to be a good member of my community, a husband and a Catholic. To minister in my daily pursuit of a living. My Mother died right after I was married, hard time finding a job, moved across the country, eventually my Father died before I was 28 years old – and it was my faith that gave me strength to wake up and start another day, to realize that God had shown me these things, taken me to these places for a reason. Both with my Mom and my Dad I was able to be with them, pray with and for them and when they went home I felt at peace.

Even my adventure here to Santa Rosa and the NSC. These too are a mission, a calling that I must embrace as a direction that God has asked me to take and to go. I realized that my work life was my mission – my service to my faith. That our faith cannot be a shield or a sword, that it is an embrace and a lighthouse. That through our principals we will show others that we can be greater than our flesh or fallacies – and that from time to time God does amazing things through us, with us and to us if we let him. At the same time our faith needs to be not a cold and distant thing –as the Jesuits always said to me that we needed to “embrace the times of man.”

"A slight error in the beginning is a great error in the end." --St. Thomas Aquinas

Business leaders do not do enough:

• Personal sharing of challenges, stories, learning’s and how to over come obstacles
• Bring a spiritual personal, bringing the bigger picture to what they are doing and why they are
• Give thanks, give praise and relate one-on-one to those we work along side

The Paper Heart

I want to share a story of how, we sometimes think we know the world and how in the end it is not in that way at all. A friend of mine, Jim was the CFO of a large company in the mid-west I worked at. He had come from an even bigger bank, Boatmen’s Bank. One time while sharing with him over lunch my desire for the leaders of a business to be open to chances in building relationships through open, caring dialogue. That we only grow if the trust of the team grows in each other, including the leaders. In doing this, yes we are vulnerable in the moment but it also strengthens us all.

Jim was a very professional, very calm, very much a banker. So when he cleared his throat at lunch that day I heard a small rumbling of tears being held back. He breath taken in as he started to share this story. “Well David, it was many years ago and I was a midlevel executive at the bank working hard to move up. My boss was a fair man, but very, well, cold and stern. No small talk, no good morning or how is the family. It became my regular practice to come in on Saturdays and work a full day, I was trying very hard to stay a head of the paper flow and project demands.

This one Saturday I ended up running late and I ended up bring my littlest child, my daughter Kate. She was all of 7 and it was just before valentines day. I was a bit put off by this, I loved the quite time – no one at the office, no meetings no phones. At the last second my wife had the idea of giving her a bunch of colored paper, crayons and such and she could cut and past and make Valentines for the kids in her class. I set her up right outside my office and in time I was lost in my computer spread sheets.”

At this moment as Jim was about to go on, he welled up a bit and said “It will be hard for me to share this without tearing up, so excuse be. After about an hour I look out and realize it was quite and my Kate was no where to be seen. As I stood there in the quite I could hear voices down the hall and at that second the blood drained from my face. Kate was with my boss!

As I walked up I heard Kate as she presnted a large, I mean a good two feet by three feet paper heart. She was asking my boss to be her Valentine. The smile on his face changed my panic to compassion. He said with great joy ‘why yes Ms Kate it would be my honor…’ and with that he stood up and asked if he could tape it to his door. She smiled so big and they hugged. We quickly left and we both headed home.

Well on that Monday morning the heart was still there and my boss called me in and said “thanks Jim for that chance to meet Kate and that it really warmed his heart. He shared that his wife had passed away a few years ago and his children and grandchildered lived all over the country and he seldom see’s them. The moment of sincere joy and love by Kate really touched him.”

Jim said, “and here I was a grown man, who had worked for this man for almost two years and knew none of this, out of fear of ‘but its not a business thing to care’ and instead my brave, loving daughter of 7 knew that this man needed a moment of joy and fearlessly went in and did what she thought needed to be done. You see, on the drive home that night I asked her, so Kate what made you do that? Her reply was “I saw him Daddy for a minute in the hall and I knew he had a sad heart and I wanted to make him happy and realize God loves him.”

You Belong To Jesus – Mother Theresa, Heart Of Joy

I read a story some week’s back by Mother Theresa and she shared that “one of our brothers came to me in anguish and said, My calling is to work for the lepers.” He really loved the lepers. “I want to devote my life, my whole being to carry out the calling.” I said to him, “You are mistaken. Your calling is to belong to Jesus. He has chosen you for himself, and to work is only a means of love for him in action. So the work you do is of no importance. What is important is that you belong to him, that he gives you the means to do what you have to do."

The same is true for us, it does not matter what we do or where we are as long as we bear in mind that we are his. Jesus can do with us as he wants. We owe him our love. Whether we work for the rich or on the behalf of the poor, whether we work among people of high society or among inhabitants of the inner city, what is important is only the love we put into carrying out our job.

I Challenge The Group

• Look at your jobs as a mission of our faith – live it and act in ways that show you care, with out preaching or demanding
• Do not shy away from bring a spirit, a purpose and belief into the work place
• Win at all cost – someone must lose so we win is a dangerous path, be careful to not gain the world but lose your love of God
• Do not make faith not a shield, not a sword – instead make it an embrace, a lighthouse
• That you can be successful in business without having to live in a mindset of "to succeed someone must fail" - instead find a way for all to gain from the business
• And most of all, try and find peace in going where God wants us to be – not what we think we should be doing, or the world says we should but where in the moments of prayer and silence we hear a path, or something or someone is brought to us to look past the white noise and buzz and open our hearts.

"He who works my fate has no need of any other help from me, but the good will to do His Will, and an entire abandonment to His good Providence."

--St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

"True followers of Christ; Be prepared to have a world make jokes at your expense. You can hardly expect a world to be more reverent to you than to Our Lord. When it does make fun of your faith, its practices, abstinences, and rituals— then you are moving to a closer identity with Him Who gave us our faith. Under scorn, Our Lord "answered nothing". The world gets amusement from a Christian who fails to be Christian, but none from his respectful silence.

-- Archbishop Fulton Sheen