by Karen Kovaka
Freshman, Presidential Scholar, Boston College

[Karen joined us as an intern in June of 2008, and was a wonderful addition to our life for a month.  An unusually thoughtful almost-freshman in college at the time, she reads widely and cares deeply.]

The men sitting two tables over from me in the coffee shop are in the midst of a job counseling session.  From the bits of conversation wafting over to me, I gather that the older, accented man with deep rings around his eyes left his former job and is searching for a next step.  He's listening politely to the young, soft-voiced counselor as he tries to understand what is supposed to happen next. 

"I told them I had kids and could only do these hours..."

"...and you want to settle on something, not bounce around."

"Tell me about a time you settled a dispute."

"...make mistakes all the time..."

"...development and advancement is an option for everyone"

What should I do?
Where should I work?
Why do I get up in the morning?

The reason I came to Washington was to ask these questions.  In the six weeks I've been here, I've heard them echoed back at me by many people in many forms.  I came, like the man in the coffee shop, the woman in the hair salon, and the intern on the Hill (all of whom I've encountered just today), full of frustrations and feeling as though if I just learned a little more, I'd finally be able to figure out what I was supposed to do. 

In fact, I landed here for part of the summer determined to see my mental categories develop so that, by the end, I could watch as my mind latched onto diverse bits of information and squeezed them through a set of philosophical molds as a child would do with so much play-dough.  Six weeks to the perfectly sculpted mind.

Needless to say, that didn't happen. 

This set of reflections certainly doesn't provide all the answers I hoped it would.  It isn't a systematic setting forth of beliefs I have re-evaluated or ideas I have come to accept.  Instead, it's a narrative, an attempt to chronicle a six-week thought journey.  In many ways it resembles the journey of Princess Irene in George MacDonald's novel The Princess and the Goblin.  Irene makes her way through MacDonald's story by grasping with nimble, sensitive fingers a literal, yet almost invisible, thread that has been given to her as a guide.  It leads her up mountains, through prisons, and, ultimately, to the climax of the story itself.  She navigates her way through a perilous and beautiful fairy world by following her silvery thread, and along the way she touches the threads and stories of all the other relevant characters.  This pursuit of her given path is the only way for her to understand her part in the greater fabric of the entire adventure. 

In this same spirit of belief I grasp my thread and follow it as it winds its own way around office buildings and through metro stations, leading me from experience to experience and thought to thought. 

How did I get here?  

I heard about the Washington Institute through Steve Garber's book The Fabric of Faithfulness.  It was a book that resonated with my hopes and fears about life, a book that met me at the core of many nameless frustrations and gave me new ways of thinking and expressing.  I knew I wanted to learn more.  After some emails and phone conversations, I received an invitation to visit for a few weeks, to "come and see the word made flesh." 

That was a scary thing.  I was pursuing an idea that I loved, but it could always turn out to be a reality that was disappointing because the actuality is never the same as what we imagine, right?  This particular reality was entirely unlike my expectations, but no less amazing and wonderful.  The reason is that the details of life I encountered, the conversations I had. and the lessons I learned all expressed the same truths.  These six weeks in Washington weren't just an educational experience; they were a picture of an integrated, whole life.  Let me explain the picture a little bit. 

Corrupt men, hallowed chambers, impossible ideas - they're all here.  Washington is, after all, a center for the most driven of peoples and the most imposing of places.  And yet, there is this unlikely group of people nestled into a corner of it all.  They are part of this wild city, involved in the most pressing concerns of the nation, but they somehow manage to reflect and be an authentic community.  They drive old Volvos with glove compartments held together by clear packing tape and they break off conversations to pick up trash from the street.  Though they work in law, real estate, medicine, politics and psychology, they see themselves as small, humble, and sometimes silly.  Ideas are everything to them, yet they are conscious of their practical callings as small but necessary pieces of the work of restoration being wrought in the world.  

My next question was, What is this picture saying to me?  I was seeking to understand ideas, and in Washington I was fortunate enough to see them given real expression in and through the people I met.  It was word made flesh -concepts and words becoming truly understood because actual people cared about and lived them.  One of the central ideas that make the kind of life I witnessed possible is that personal significance has little to do with distinguishing yourself from everyone else.  Instead, it's about becoming a part of everyone else.  We could say that the answer to the question, "What does meaning mean?" is that it doesn't consist of rising above but of becoming connected, of corresponding to people and place and time. 

I can't describe how much I needed this.  There exists in me, as in everyone else, a deeply rooted desire to matter.  The search for significance is always somewhere in my mind, lurking and nagging at me.  Legitimate as this questioning and seeking is, I lacked a true understanding of what mattering actually means, so I had no way to judge success, only an open-ended fear of never quite reaching it. 

In fact, two months ago, my conception of mattering consisted primarily of escaping, at all costs, a vocation that was common, or average.  I worried that unless my life involved some extreme end of the spectrum-- either great pleasure or great pain, fantastic wealth or genuine poverty --there would be nothing to distinguish it from all the rest.  There would be nothing in it to which I could point and say, "That mattered.  I am confident that it was good." 

Into this haze of worrying that I didn't know enough to choose a path that would matter and believing that I never would be able to matter unless I madly internalized all the information I possibly could came the philosophy and community of the Washington Institute.   

At the heart of the understanding of vocation and meaning taught at the Washington Institute is the conviction that community - common life, common grace and common good - is a necessary element of a truly meaningful vocation.  Individuals don't really exist only as individuals.  We exist as people bound into a network of other people and places.  If we deny this, or if we believe we must rise above the common in order to matter, then we are deceived as to the nature of what mattering as an individual actually means.

I became convinced of the truth of this concept as I met and talked with people whose lives are proofs of it.  These were the people who high-five over a copy of Wendell Berry's Jayber Crow between meetings about organizational structures, lawyers with beautiful red-gold hair who wear cherry-sprinkled dresses as they practice adoption and employment law, and groups of idealists, seekers, and world travelers who connect the most typical parts of life to questions of great significance.  The significance of these people is in their self-deprecating smiles and in their passion for the common: common tables, common friendships, common lives.  The value is in what is shared.

These words from Wendell Berry's essay "Men and Women in Search of Common Ground" helped me understand what I was learning and seeing:

"Our choice may be between a small, human-sized meaning and a vast meaninglessness...It is only in these bonds that our individuality has a use and a worth; it is only to the people who know us, love us, and depend on us that we are indispensable as the persons we uniquely are...Separate from the relationships, there is nobody to be known; people become, as they say and feel, nobodies." 

Somehow, in a way that is still dawning on me, my confusion about meaning resolves itself in the context of this idea.  Many questions still have to be worked out, and many conversations are still to be had, but this is the answer that I, and the man in the coffee shop, and thousands of other people, are seeking.  It will take the rest of a life, and longer, but what I am taking away is a peace, a sense that God is faithful and that he has a meaning for me that will take shape in the context of a community of people and a humble vocation. 

This is more than a peace, though.  It's irresistible excitement.  Somehow, my longing to be swept up into something greater and my wild love for the most far-removed stories is validated, not stifled, when I acknowledge desire for a "small, human-sized meaning."  The goodness and beauty of this truth is that God plans for his glories to be shown in what is humble and what is flawed - through me.  In the abstract, this knowledge is valuable enough, but actually seeing it, gives a real picture of what life can be. 

I wanted to know what I should do, where I should work, to have more of a reason to get up in the morning.  I have been able to ask my questions and see some of the ways they are asked and answered in the lives of other people.  My silvery thread has intersected with many others, showing me pictures of meaning and significance that rely on an understanding of and commitment to community in order to exist.  I can't imagine a more practical thing to learn, or a more encouraging thing to witness.

So, what do people with checkered pasts and odd senses of humor and petty frustrations do when they discover something greater than themselves that also loves the earthliest things in them?  What do people with nervous habits and depths of inexperience and scattered brains do when they can know that they are also immortal beings whose purpose is to participate, with countless others, in a great, meaningful work?  What do we do when we see that the whole world has a reason and that, when we recognize the riches of the commonplace, we're a part of it?

Well, I remember one afternoon when three of us, amidst a conversation that ranged from the life of one person to the future of the whole world, were overwhelmed by the grace of it all.  There was nothing to do but break into laughter that brought a flash of sky over a mountain ridge and into our brown bag lunches and the metallic outdoor tables and to say, with mirth peeking around every letter, "God bless us!" 

Because he will.                 

And he does...