Mission is not “mine” – releasing the power of mission
By Stephen Simmer
You never go away from us, yet we have difficulty in returning to you. Come, stir us up and call us back. Kindle and seize us. Be our fire and our sweetness. Let us love. Let us run. –Augustine
We stand up in a circle and say, “My mission is. . .” But to me there’s something wrong about calling it my mission, like it’s a possession that belongs to me. My mission is not my possession, like my car or my I-phone. It possesses me, like spirit possession. My mission is greater than me. I belong to it. It grabs me by the neck. The etymology of the word mission connects it to the word smite. It is something that smacks me and knocks me down, refuses to be ignored, makes me change my life.
When I speak my mission for the first time, I may have a sense of deja vu, as if I am saying something I have known all along. Like Augustine says, “Too late I came to love you, and you were with me all the time.” It is as if mission has been whispering in my ear my entire life, but I hadn’t been listening. It is as if I have had a companion from the beginning, but I was turned the other way.
When I form a mission statement with a vision and an action, in my opinion it’s like trying to cage the Wild Man in the Iron Hans story. When I recite it, I put my mission on display, and pretend that I’ve captured it and put it in the zoo. But that caged creature isn’t the real Mission. It tricks its way out of my definition. It needs to be on the move, alive and changing.
The Latin word missionem means “sending, releasing, setting at liberty.” If there’s no movement or sense of freedom in it, it’s not really Mission. It scoops us up on its back and carries us into the forest, like in the story. When I ride on mission’s back, it’s deciding where we go, carrying me to places I’ve never been. As Augustine says, “Be our fire and our sweetness. Let us love. Let us run.”
If I let Mission carry me, it takes me to a place where all things glisten with golden beauty. My life makes sense, there’s value in what I do. In the Iron Hans story, the wild man carries the boy to a pool that changes everything to gold, and the boy sticks his wounded finger in the pool. Even my wounds have gold in them, become an essential part of my mission work. Before, I hid my wounds out of shame, or out of fear that the pain would start again. Now, my wounds glisten with gold. No, I don’t wait for them to heal before I begin my mission work. My wounds as they are become my bridge of compassion, my connection to the wounded world. Then my wound is not must mine, it becomes the place where I can feel the pain of the world.
Steve Simmer, for those of us privileged to know him, lives his life in the midst of the constant stream and theme of mission. Appropriately enough, one of his formal mission statements is that he “creates a world of freedom by encouraging men with my courage to do all that they can be and to be all that they can do.” By profession a psychotherapist, he works continuously to inspire men to actively find and engage in their own mission in this world. Dr. Simmer completed the New Warrior Training Adventure back in 2001, and has never been the same man since.
To learn more about Steve and his work you can visit his website
– is a deeply personal issue that everyone decides for himself. Sometimes the price is high, sometimes low. But this is not very important for life. Life is an interesting thing. And the price on Viagra – too.
