The luck of the Irish

I've gone to Ireland every year for 6 or 7 years to lead a workshop. All the Irish folks think I look Irish. With family names like O'Connor, Sadler, Jones, McCormick and Bradley, I wasn't sure how much of my DNA was Irish but I was sure it mostly came from the British Isles. After my DNA results came back as only 11.9% Irish/British and most of the rest Scandinavian I'll be able to talk to the Irish next year about the Viking Invaders!

But my 11.9% somewhere near Ireland blood has given me the luck of the Irish.

Ever so often, when I'm listening to somebody complaining about their job, I realize I've never had a job I didn't love.

Through a lot of my childhood I worked for my Uncle Russel in his grocery store. I stocked shelves and filled bags and was a cashier in the later years of high school and got to cut cold cuts from time to time. It was always fun. To this day I rue the days I don't have to go to a grocery store.

One college summer I worked for the WV Highway Department in Welch, keeping track of where all the vehicles were and making sure what they did each day was recorded correctly. I loved talking to the truck drivers and road repair guys. It was always fun (though I must admit I only got the job because my father was a Republican--it was a 'political appointment' as the 'Yellow Dog Democrat' I became I feel a tad guilty about that.

Two other college summers I worked at a summer camp. Since I had no particular camp skills, I was the "Nature boy" and took kids on discovery trips through the woods, naming flora and fauna. And I helped at the archery range since I could shoot a bow. All the kids were sons and daughters of coal miners and so was I. So I loved being with them.

My senior year of college, I was a Resident Assistant in a Freshman Dorm. Loved it, even holding the heads of up-chucking freshmen as they worshiped at the toilet shrine after a hard night of beer drinking. (You could drink at 18 in those days....)

My second year at Harvard Divinity School, I was a member of the staff of the Radcliffe Library and assigned Dewey Decimal numbers to new books. I once cataloged a book called, I kid you not, Planning Spontaneity. That was the highlight of my day. And I loved the people I worked with. I love all bookish people.

After Harvard I was a PA (Production Assistant) at a Public Television Station--WWVU in Morgantown. I made so little money that Bern and I were on food stamps, but I got to run a TV camera and be on the sidelines, hauling wires, of all the WVU games. Plus, the people who worked there were all creative and wondrous. I loved even a poverty level job.

After that I was a Social Service Worker for the WV Department of Welfare. I was a child protection specialist which meant I investigated and often took action in child abuse cases. It was difficult and stressful work, but I came to believe it was better I was doing it than someone else. I hurt a lot for the kids and for their families, but I believed someone who 'hurt' doing the work was better than someone who didn't. And I saved some kids and reunited some families. That was pretty special. As emotional as it was, I loved it.

Then came the three churches I served as a full time priest. I must say that I was always amazed that they paid me for doing something I loved so much.

And I taught English and was Center Manager at the Regional Council for Education for Employment, working with Welfare Moms mostly, who were smart and talented and had fallen through the cracks and after 16 weeks we found them jobs at Aetna and IBM and Yale, places like that, plus I adored all the people I worked with. How good was that.

And now, in my dotage, I teach every other semester or so at UConn in Waterbury in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (Olli for short). I teach weird classes on the gospels and Gnostic Christianity and people come and want to learn.

Then their is MACM (the Middlesex Area Cluster Ministry) where I am Missioner to three churches working with two other priests I love dearly and with three unique and wondrous congregations. They are so very different from each other--the three congregations--but they blend into a remarkable and so lovable tapestry. How blessed I am to know St. James, Higganum and Emmanuel, Killingworth and St. Andrew's, Northford.

So in all my decades of working--working hard most of the time--I have loved my work intensely. And here at the end of my life's work I am loving it still and maybe most of all.

The luck of the Scandinavians, I guess....My LUCK anyway. My Blessing and My Joy.