21 octombrie 2024
12 cântece Cercetaşii Munților (1997-1999)
“Abraham set out, not knowing where he went”
Hebrews 11, 8
Abstract. As a synthesis of ten years’ experience in career orientation for students and graduates of human and social sciences, this article resumes the issue of XXIst century nonlinear career theories and proposes a model of a “non-figurative career” in a key of spiritual theology of the Providence. On the one hand, this model allows integrating negative experiences of frustration and cognitive dissonance that many young graduates are subject to while waiting for a satisfactory professional insertion. On the other hand, this same model integrates the positive experience of “serendipity” analysed in ten case studies of graduates from the Faculty of Greek Catholic Theology, Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj. Finally, this model builds up the thesis that the new characteristics of the careers in social and human sciences can be integrated in an itinerary of Christian faith lived in abandonment to Providence.
Keywords: providence, serendipity, career choice, indecision, abandonment to Providence.
In the book of psychologist John Krumboltz, Luck Is No Accident, a caricature shows a nine-year-old boy waiting with his father at a bus stop. The father asks him the famous question: “What would you like to do when you grow up?” Obviously, the father is in professional transition, because the son answers: “I don’t know ... But you, what would you like to do?” To consider one's career as a plan that is established at the end of the college and then executed (according to the Aristotelian model of deliberation followed by choice and execution) is a model considered more and more often as outdated by the reality of the working environment.
The traditional vision of the career focuses on the correspondence between a trait of the personality and a certain profession and wants the person to build his / her career plan according to this correspondence.[1] This vision has been changing after the 90s, and so many changes have occurred[2], that we are now talking about “21st century careers.[3]” These careers bring elements of novelty as far as constructing a professional project is concerned: first, there is the normality of indecision and even “the wisdom of indecision[4]”; then, it is a question of a non-linear career that is understood through theories of complexity and chaos[5]; moreover, theories of complex systems me to be adapted to one’s career, showing how a small change can give a fundamentally new direction to a person's professional future.[6]
In this context of novelty, another debated chapter is the one on the “protean career,” which shows how much the task of building a career now weighs on an individual.[7] Anyway, this pressure present in the professional life exists at the level of the entire society – in the words of the German sociologist Ulrich Beck, “how one lives becomes the biographical solution of systemic contradictions”[8]. As a result, many career orientation theories attempt at constructing strategies that are adapted to the often anxiogenic complexity of the reality of work. Young students are encouraged to overcome zeteophobia[9] (anxiety associated with career decision-making) with flexibility, adaptability[10] and a vision of “planned happenstance.[11]”
On the one hand, one can reunite all these changes in contemporary careers, even if they have various causes in themselves, in one unique vision of a career that can no longer be planned linearly at the beginning of one’s formation. This fact immediately poses a more general problem about the meaning one can find to one’s life in a world that often changes much faster than our plans.[12] On the other hand, since a state of uncertainty regarding the future of the profession has become normal, the remark that originated the thesis of this article is the fact that to multiply and refine the concrete strategies for finding a job is no longer enough. A real rethinking of the existential context[13] of today’s careers becomes necessary in order to identify a theoretical framework that can integrate the psychological and even the spiritual transformations that students and graduates undergo at the beginning of their careers, in addition to the objective classical stages of a career.[14]
In this context, the discussion on events of serendipity and some biographical details that give meaning to a life are not merely common facts meant to satisfy people’s curiosity: on the contrary, they are precisely the founding events that allow for tracing a solidarity of destiny[15] among those who seek a meaning for their professional life. Thus, the construction of a career that cannot be imagined at the beginning of one’s formation, but that can be discovered at a moment where “things fall into place” allows the development of a thesis speaking of a person’s professional insertion by borrowing elements from spiritual experiences such as pilgrimages and the rules of a Christian spiritual life, thus giving a positive meaning to the experiences of uncertainty and real frustration that are today the general ingredients of early career.
The thesis of this article finally finds a connection between the process of professional integration that certain graduates in Greek-Catholic theology experienced and the attitude of abandonment to Providence, specific to a step taken in Christian faith. The abandonment to Providence, the trustful recourse to a hidden God, in the line of writings like the one attributed to the Jesuit Jean-Pierre de Caussade,[16] has emerged as a discovery of modern mysticism in nineteenth century France, at the very moment when “the hand of God became less and less legible in history.[17]” Even more, at the turn from the twentieth century (the century of Auschwitz) to the new century that begins in a negative globalization[18], if God hides even more, Christian “adulthood[19]” means living with even more confidence in his Providence. Thus, for a young graduate of the twenty first century to initiate a career path becomes an inner experience of abandonment to Providence. There is more to it: paradoxically, the inner mechanisms as psychological and sociological processes of any starting career can be better understood in the light of the inner mechanisms of this abandonment, which, far from being a tranquil passivity, is moving forward while having no control on the evolution of one’s professional future and on the outcome of one’s own choices for formation, even though these choices are in fact crucial for the whole life of the person.
The constitutive uncertainty of contemporary careers also leads to the appearance of an unexpected experience: the phenomenon of “serendipity.” The literature on serendipity, which is very rich when describing scientific discoveries made by chance, refers in our case to people who find a good motivating job not thanks to a classical strategy (Curriculum Vitae, recruitment site), but thanks to unexpected events, called “unplanned events”[20], “serendipity”[21], “unexpected opportunities”[22], fate[23] or luck.[24] For example, a person who has studied English, Turkish and German and who has not found a satisfactory job encounters on a plane the head of a German radio station who is just looking for his profile of a translator.
Many authors link up these events with the phenomenon of Jungian synchronicity, and this fact is now part of career guidance techniques and schools.[25] Synchronicity implies coincidence but it is more to it than that. For Carl Gustav Jung, it must be a “meaningful coincidence” or an “acausal parallelism”.[26] Roderick Main summarizes the various meanings of synchronicity, showing that an experience of synchronicity has four characteristics: “two or more events parallel one another through having identical, similar, or comparable content; there is no discernible or plausible way in which this paralleling could be the result of normal causes; the paralleling must be sufficiently unlikely and detailed as to be notable; the experience must be meaningful beyond being notable”.[27] For Main, this type of experience of synchronicity became a common topic of spirituality and an object of knowledge regardless of its connection with beliefs or systems of thought. [28]
Taking into account the “unexpected opportunities” that synchronicity phenomena entail is considered important in the period following the economic crisis of 2008.[29] On the other hand, from the point of view of spirituality, the phenomena of serendipity draw attention to the importance of a holistic vision of the person looking for a job.[30] However, these gains are often presented as recommendations, as spirituality is still little used by career counselors. On the other hand, Christian theology is often absent in the discussion of the phenomena of “serendipity:” one can speak more easily of a Jungian, transcendental, Buddhist, Hindu or quantum physics vision, [31] but plenty of room remains for an interpretation of serendipity in the light of Christian theology. It is precisely here that the question of the part Christian Providence is playing in this type of happy coincidence events arises.
Although Providence does not exist as a concept in the Bible, it is a living presence throughout sacred history. For example, Abraham on the mountain of Moriah already affirms the existence of Providence: “God will provide” (Gen 22:8). The Christian reflection on Providence is built alongside Jewish, Neo-Platonic or Stoic developments.[32] The contribution of Saint Thomas especially augmented this reflection.[33] He sees Providence unfolding from universal Providence to Providence concerning individuals, while he also distinguishes between Providence and divine government. In fact, for Thomas, Providence is not the isolated or unexpected miracle, it is “not a supernatural intervention of God, more or less sudden, that would upset the natural order of created things in order to respond to this or that situation, (...) in order to avoid this or that damage. God’s Providence first refers to the eternal reason according to which each creature can pursue and reach his or her own end, according to the means made available by God”[34].
In the twentieth century the doctrine of Providence comes to grips with the discoveries of science, on the one hand, and with the horrors of totalitarianism on the other. Several constitutions of the Second Vatican Council refer to the presence of Providence[35] within the dialogue with all these new changes, with a focus on the divine economy of salvation. More recently, in 2014, the Dominican Emmanuel Durand proposed a new reading of the main elements that used to constitute the classic theme of Providence.[36] This reading assumed an understanding of divine action in relation to the new discoveries of culture and of contemporary theology according to three registers: the question of the relationship between divine action and human action, in a subject-level hermeneutics, the question of divine action in history, and, finally the dialogue between faith and the new discoveries of natural sciences.[37]
The experience of the Shoah and that of totalitarianism gave new perspectives on Providence emerging in a world that directly questions God’s withdrawal from history. The writings of the German Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer start speaking of a certain “adulthood,” an age of humanity in which, in a certain way, man realizes that there is a possibility of God not intervening in the human history as a visible omnipotence. But this same perspective deepens the relationship with the true God, according to the same Protestant theologian: Un tel renoncement à une fausse image de Dieu est en réalité conforme au choix de se tenir continument devant Dieu, le vrai Dieu. Or celui-ci, révélé en Jesus-Christ, n’est pas un Dieu a portée de main, toujours disponible. Il est le Dieu caché[38].
Here begins, under extreme and painful situations, a direction of thought that will develop after the Second World War in theology as well as in philosophy and sociology: it is man’s turn to make room for kindness, to be the messenger of God. God is no longer in the great stories but in the little stories, in special initiatives. In any case, the great theories of the philosophy and theology of history have been in crisis since Auschwitz, and even “the overall presupposition of a sense of history, though inaccessible to the present, seems to be rather a condition of individual commitment to the service of earthly realities.”[39]
And the crisis of the theology of Providence deepens as the natural sciences undermine, on their side, the vision of a God who acts in nature. By reviewing the life sciences, the theories of chance or of Intelligent Design[40] that infringe on the classical territory reserved for Providence, Durand organizes contemporary contributions on the theme of Providence in theology, including those of Jean Maldamé, Medard Kehl or Terrance Tiessen.[41] One can notice that "the disenchantment of the world and scientific progress constantly reduce the field where God was once invoked (...). As the gaps in our rational explanations of what happens are filled, God seems less and less necessary in the explanatory register.”[42]
It is then justified to ask what is the place of Providence in contemporary Theology? What intellectual pivots will be able to invigorate a good argumentation of the presence of Providence? Here events like “serendipity” bring a new air and impose a different intellectual approach. If the theme of Providence also concerns the problem of the existence of the evil that God allows,[43] when one speaks of serendipity, the perspective is simplified in a certain way, being limited to “happy events” only. In addition, serendipity presents itself as a concrete face of Providence: one cannot deny serendipity when it shows itself.
Thus, from the point of view of Catholic Theology, with serendipity the theme of Providence acquires a very practical dimension, summarized by a classical, but still useful work of Romano Guardini. Guardini shows that “Providence is a reality that one must not necessarily think about, but rather fulfill. Stay attentive in order to recognize it in every situation. [44]” This perspective joins the main direction of the definition of Providence in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which insists more on the reality of a “God Love” that accompanies the history of mankind, and less on the quest for a super-computer that has written in advance the whole scenario. [45] For the CCC, “Divine providence consists of the dispositions by which God guides all his creatures with wisdom and love to their ultimate end (321)” and here one must stress wisdom and especially love. God is not only thought and power, He is also love.
Returning to the dimension of Providence in the horizon of the immanence of a personal history, one must note here an important chapter of Durand on the conversion of St. Augustine in the Confessions. He highlights the long duration of the journey of conversion and he shows how God uses all the troubles and difficulties of Augustine’s life, and patiently takes advantage of any event, in order to lead Augustine to the goal[46]. At the same time, one can notice how God uses human mediations, encounters, words and prayers of Augustine's mother, as well as homilies and various readings. An eminently introspective account, Augustine’s Confessions contain the specific formulation of the concept of Providence, related to the secret and often sinuous ways in which God draws a person to the truth and to the encounter with Him: “Is it not even as I recall, O Lord my God, Thou judge of my conscience? My heart and my memory are laid before You, who at that time directed me by the inscrutable mystery of Your Providence, and set before my face those vile errors of mine, in order that I might see and loathe them.”[47]. The secret of the Providence proposes and also creates the detours of a person’s ways. “ O my God, in the hidden design of Your Providence, did not desert my soul; and out of the blood of my mother's heart, through the tears that she poured out by day and by night, was a sacrifice offered unto You for me; and by marvellous ways did Thou deal with me. It was Thou, O my God, who did it, for the steps of a man are ordered by the Lord, and He shall dispose his way. Or how can we procure salvation but from Your hand, remaking what it has made??”[48] Finally, synchronicity (and therefore happy coincidence) appears in the culminating moment of Augustine's conversion, the famous “take and read.”
In fact, all this sinuous way corresponds to the complete vision of the action of God in the life of a person, according to Augustine: “God does not content Himself with posing created existence, but He triggers a complete network of connections and accompaniment. The act of the Creator is not only to bring about the existence of the creature (creatio) but also to call it (vocatio) in order to initiate its movement towards God (conversio) and to confer to it its completed form (formatio).”[49]
One may say that the complexity of the dogmatic theology of Providence has its correspondent in the spiritual theology of Providence, in the multiplicity of its stages and discoveries of the levels of intervention of Providence in somebody’s life. Whoever takes the path of faith must first be able to recognize Providence and then learn to cooperate with it. The themes of spiritual direction in the classical handbooks of the XIXth century are related to the transformations undergone by someone who abandons himself to Providence. The most famous among such works is L’abandon à la Providence divine envisagé comme le moyen le plus facile de sanctification ; it is attributed to the Jesuit Jean-Pierre Caussade by its editor, another Jesuit, Fr. Henri Ramière”[50]. Dominique Sain, professor at Centre Sèvres in Paris, analyses the importance and originality of this work: “La Providence n’est plus tant l’objet d’une affirmation spéculative qu’un motif d’adhésion mystique subjective. (…) Le Dieu devenu de moins en moins lisible dans l’ordre du cosmos (désormais autonome) et dans le cours de l’histoire, se manifeste désormais dans la personne de l’âme abandonnée, du mystique. C’est le corps même du sujet et son agir qui sont devenus « évangile vivant », expression de l’ordre de Dieu. Mais cette apostolicité de l’existence mystique, à son tour, ne crève pas les yeux : il faut les yeux de la foi, si l’on peut dire, pour la discerner, et encore ![51]”. Discerning what Providence commands in the light of the superior value of daily events and actions becomes the preoccupation of the believer.
Alongside with these treaties on modern mystics such as l’Abandon à la Divine Providence, (and the theology of Thérèse de Lisieux is not far from them), „focussing on the present moment has come to be more important than considering God’s action in the progress of history as well as in the course of a human life. When the presence of God is no longer discernible in history, there is nothing left for the believer in order to cling to Him except for the present moment ”[52]. Certain authors[53] will see this as a passage from the contemplation by the believer of the „great stories” to the pursuit of „small stories”. The courage to do this – sacrificing the general view in order to comply to the concrete order, acting without having the big picture one would like or even could have – is the reading key of career choices of today as a way of living with the Providence.
After ten years of experience as a study and career counselor for students in humanities and social sciences, in 2019 I resumed my research on the precise topic of Providence and serendipity in the life of young graduates in theology who had already completed their education some ten years before. After an initial preliminary discussion, I concluded that one needs to broaden the perspective beyond serendipity events seen as a happy coincidence that occurs at a given moment – because these events do not happen to everyone and they cannot be planned in advance either. Instead, it is more useful to look at the whole path that led to a phenomenon of serendipity.
In addition, however, there is a more general phenomenon, which results from the analysis of serendipity in the whole course of training and profession: the fact that the course of training for the profession takes, at a given moment, a good turn where “things find their place.” I will name this moment “Things fall into place.” Imagining a career that, in future, can make better use of the skills and resources accumulated by the student can be a model for contemporary career management, just as well or even better than a typical initial career plan aiming at this or that position. I pursued half-directed interviews with the same graduates in theology, and the result of these interviews (which I develop in this second point of the article) is the concept of “non-figurative career.”
This career has three dimensions:
A moment of “things fall into place” may appear within the formation itself. At the beginning of their studies students do not know which topic they are going to treat in their master’s degree or in their doctoral thesis. The great ideas that put together and mobilize all the knowledge in a big project often appear unannounced. Often a bachelor’s degree paves the way for an interesting doctorate.
Example 1: J. D. is passionate about architecture, and through the theory of architecture he discovers the topic of postmodernity, which becomes the topic of his master’s degree, and later on, a part of his doctoral thesis. “It was a topic that nobody could advise me on, because the course did not exist in the faculty. It was also the topic that now allows me to satisfy both my scientific intellectual curiosity, my need to be aware of all the new things in culture, and especially to present the truths of faith in a manner that has been updated to deal with the problems of contemporary life.”
The moment of “things fall into place” can appear between the training and the profession. For the seminarians of pastoral theology, the Providence works through the proposals of the superiors. A graduate who is a candidate for the priesthood receives a suggestion from his superior: “without thinking about this particular field, I managed to get more and more involved with this cultural ‘career’ and with many spiritual benefits. One should add that the Providence is certainly the one who arranges events and brings people and events into our path in order to make us choose the most appropriate and useful service for the community. This graduate has been working passionately in the field proposed by his superior for more than ten years.
Another graduate of the seminary:
“I never planned to study X, I didn't like it, I was scared of this field and I saw it as a very, very difficult subject. However, when His Grace asked me what I would like to study in Rome, instead of answering ‘Patristics’ I asked ‘what does our Diocese more urgently need?,’ the answer was ‘X specialization.’ I did not hesitate and I did not dwell on the decision, I answered directly and spontaneously ‘I want to study X.’” This student professionally covered the subject proposed for his studies in Rome. But the element of surprise is present everywhere in these cases, and we notice that it is always a type of job that the person has never thought of, and which proves to be very beneficial. We notice that this is not a drug company that is better than another one, but a type of job that the person did not think about. Without the surprise element, he probably would never have discovered that kind of job.
At other times, the good job comes after an unexpected proposal, through an unprofessional network. “A proposal coming from an acquaintance when I was on parental leave.” Although it was unexpected (“This amused me - how could anyone recruit a person who has stayed at home for the last 4 years?”), the person immediately climbed the steps of the organization and feels fulfilled in that place.
Many prominent contemporary sociologists think that the main criterion for the analysis of the contemporary world is the human inability to cope with the speed of change. Zygmunt Bauman, author of the liquidity metaphor has been doing much research: “Liquid modern is a society in which the conditions under which its members act change faster than it takes the ways of acting to consolidate into habits and routines. [56]” Anthony Giddens or Richard Sennett also criticize in their works the destructive effects of speed: Giddens deplores the disappearance of routines, and Sennett shows the destructive effect of flexibility on human personality. [57] In this context, for many social and humanities careers, it is extremely difficult to figure out the destination of their training in the first year of university: these careers will necessarily be “non-figurative.”
3. The course of action. Third, if the destination of the career cannot be “figured out” (visible), the career development approach will not necessarily be planning, but a strategic improvisation “in the meantime.” While the traditional “figurative” career is made by implementing an initial plan, the “non-figurative” career is by improvisation, without a master plan.
This type of “in the meantime” approach is the one that Robert Venturi assigns to postmodern architecture. [58] For Venturi, the postmodern architect no longer begins with a clear project that needs to be executed, but improvises as the building goes on, accumulating elements that can be very different from one another. For this type of architecture, beauty will be at a certain point in time, at the end of an unscheduled accumulation. This process of unplanned accumulation towards a time when the destination appears is precisely the non-figurative career path: the individual makes choices, goes through steps, but s/he will reach the unknown destination at the end of his or her effort, and not before having accomplished all this effort that for a long time has no concrete perspective.
This view of careers as a build-up of various elements (training, hobby, skills, volunteering, etc.) is consistent with the current research on career visualization techniques. Careers no longer have the classic meaning of path (carriage) [59] and go through processes that are described by means of various metaphors and images (Inkson for example talks about career as inheritance, cycle, construction, role, resource, story). [60]
If one analyzes present day careers in the light of the moment when “things fall into place” in a professional life, certain characteristics of these careers find a more global explanation (point 1, 2, 3). At the same time, one can notice in the course of an early career a constant opening to the spiritual dimension and to the presence of Providence (points 4, 5, 6).
1. It is normal to be undecided at the vocational level for a long period of time, and even after graduating. At the same time, the negative experiences of the early career do not solely mean “not finding a job”, but also “waiting” for a job. Now, the wait can bring an inner maturity and the consciousness of having explored most of the opportunities.
While much of the difficulty of waiting for a suitable job comes from the feeling that waiting does not make sense, career assessments and spiritual retreats make it possible to notice that waiting is not always absurd. The stories of those who eventually found a career that suits them show that the expectation made sense. The specific impatience of young people can discover the value of the time that God takes to train a person so that he gets to make wise choices beyond diplomas. The priority of youth, as Pope John Paul II saw it, is not to find a job but to reflect on one’s vocation: « L’essentiel se joue souvent à la fin de l’adolescence. Qu’est-ce que la jeunesse ? Certainement pas une période quelconque de la vie, située entre l’enfance et l’âge adulte : je pense au contraire que c’est un temps privilégié que la Providence donne à chaque être humain pour trouver sa vocation »[61]
One can usefully introduce here the concept of extrospection[62] as the reverse of introspection, but having the same value on the level of self-knowledge useful to professional life. In a way, one can say that the professional future represents a “trauma” that preoccupies a young person. Thus, in the twenty-first century, the equilibrium of maturity “is no longer solely the intelligent recovery of the personal past (introspection) but also the forward-looking projection towards the future”.[63] In this context, introspective self-discovery mechanisms can be present in the real explorations of the city and future professions (internships) that a young student accomplishes. In this sense, extrospection is a “serial vision” approach at the beginning of a career. The “serial vision” of a city, according to the classic theories of Gordon Cullen[64] and Kevin Lynch[65], is the ability of a person to discover the readability of a city by travelling through it. Whoever walks in a city discovers the city but also comes to a self-discovery in the process. In the same way, one accomplishes the course of training for a profession in a series of exploratory phases, which have nothing introspective in themselves but which in the end produce self-knowledge just as effectively as the classic introspection.
However, to advance by concrete gestures (which suppose concrete and deliberate choices) without knowing the destination, is precisely the way to advance in faith. This way of advancing in the dark appears in the lives of many saints and characters in the Bible, or in the letters of St. Paul. A large number of founders (to name only Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Saint John of God, Saint Josemaria Escrivá de Balaguer, Saint Joseph-Benedict Cottolengo) lived for a long time experimenting, praying and seeking, without knowing exactly where Providence was waiting for them and for which mission. Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer prayed for years, repeating daily “Domine, ut videam!” till he got inspired to found Opus Dei on October 2, 1928.
Therefore, to prepare oneself without knowing the mission for which one is preparing is not only a process by which God educates the religious man, but this type of inner step is a sociological model relevant for the track from the faculty to the profession. After talking with more than 2,000 students about their life project, I saw how many of these students suddenly felt comfortable when I told them that indecision is a normal thing. They tod me that it confirmed their daily experience of building a life project without knowing the final goal, the true destination of this construction.
This cognitive dissonance is always accompanied by emotional frustration (which can last for years) of always preparing for an exam “important for one’s life” without having the global vision of the path that remains to be traveled in order to stabilize this life. In fact, it is about being permanently in action, without the possibility to benefit from the result of the action, or at least without being able to figure it out. In addition, this dissonance worsens if we take into account the precarious life of young students and graduates[66], unemployment, the current crisis and the increasingly difficult economic situation of young people – to the point of speaking of a new transitional age between studies and profession. [67]
How to give meaning to this long lasting negative experience? One of the explanatory models of the metaphorical type that integrates the elements of this cognitive dissonance is the pilgrimage metaphor. The pilgrimage is a metaphor already present in contemporary sociology: Zygmunt Bauman proposes for the contemporary professions the metaphor of nomadism – under the two forms of vagrants and tourists. [68] Danielle Hervieux-Leger uses the notion of pilgrimage, stemming from religious experience, in order to describe the way of constructing the contemporary religious identity – which for this sociologist is no longer a stabilized identity, but it is built in movement, by accumulating various practices borrowed in a personal way without direct reference to the institution. [69] However, the metaphor of pilgrimage in a changing world also incorporates the concrete experience of young graduates. One of the speakers (N X) argues: “The path between faculty and career is a pilgrimage in which, instead of holy objects, you accumulate as many collections of skills as possible. But you must have the courage and the habit of mobilizing everything you know, without being afraid to listen, even to ‘steal’ the secrets of the trade” NX. The course of the training for the profession borrows various formulations associated with the pilgrimage metaphor: “adventure”, “exploration”, “mountain hiking”.
Thus, the traditional vision of the correspondence “trait and factor theory” becomes more complex here: indeed, it is a correspondence that one discovers, but a correspondence between one’s personal history (training and experiences included) and a job that integrates this personal story. Besides, the path that leads to this discovery is better understood as a track and its difficulties, as a pilgrimage route to a promised land. In fact, the metaphor of the land promised to Abraham suggested at the beginning of this article implies the fact that one lives permanently in a situation of waiting for the promise to be fulfilled. Waiting means a certain passivity, but in the middle of action. Besides, one can go on for years without having the vision of the goal one will reach: this paradoxical duality finally leads one to discover the link between professional insertion and abandonment to Providence.
Now, the human experience which contains the same paradox is the Christian abandonment to Divine Providence. The core of the works on surrender to Providence (the one attributed to Father de Caussade among others[70]) is precisely the fact that true abandonment is not mere passivity, but it includes a paradoxical duality between action and passivity. This time, it has a positive meaning: the habit of doing everything in our power, and at the same time expecting everything from God. Passivity is, in fact, an opening, an availability, the essence of the relationship with God.
The difficulty of abandonment lies precisely in keeping both attitudes at the same time: avoiding action alone and pure passivity. The acceptance, in the career, to act from day to day without seeing the concrete destination requires a patience that often becomes difficult to understand or sustain without this Christian vision of life. The heroism of today’s careers is a heroism of inner patience.
All those who are patient in their profession are not Christians, but Christian patience allows for a broader and more comprehensive explanatory model. The place which uncertainty occupies in career statistics is occupied, from the point of view of Christian spiritual theology, by trust in Providence. The perspective of Providence does not make waiting any easier, but it fills it with meaning, because the experience of Providence is not limited to a momentary success, but it is precisely the trust of each day. To maintain the confidence that there will be a destination at the end of the road – “to hope against all hope” – is a Christian experience that Saint Paul recalls, and which can become an explanatory model for many career developments today.
Many phenomena related to the darkness of faith and advancement without seeing the presence of God, but keeping the trust, are present in the testimonies of young graduates looking for a satisfactory working position. A graduate said: “now I do not know what I want to do, but I have come closer to the type of job that would suit me.” It is thus a journey in the night, towards a resonance that will appear at a given moment between the self and the world of work, which can only be finalized by an individual discovery at the end of this journey through obscurity. This discovery requires a patience which, when it exceeds a certain limit, reaches a confidence, conscious or not, in a form of transcendence.
The book of Caussade is abundant in quotes that speak of obscurity, a little after the manner of Saint John of the Cross: “Nous ouvrons les yeux du corps pour voir le soleil et ses rayons, mais les yeux de notre âme, par lesquels nous voyons Dieu et ses ouvrages, sont des yeux fermés. Les ténèbres tiennent ici la place de la lumière; la connaissance est une ignorance et on voit en ne voyant pas. L’Écriture sainte est une parole obscure d’un Dieu encore plus obscur; les événements du siècle sont des paroles obscures de ce même Dieu si caché et inconnu[71]”.
In fact, some spiritual perspectives see the synchronicity of professional life as an opportunity for someone to be “open-minded” and to think holistically. But Christianity makes it possible to speak of even more interior things: acceptance without resignation, reality of purification, patience in the “night of the spirit.” While some spiritual practices offer personal development methods that use the concrete professional path, Christianity offers an effective path to be travelled along with the concrete professional path. The Christian life can provide metaphors, but it has more than that: it can completely integrate a search for professional insertion. To seek one’s vocation is to seek Providence.
[1] The Trait and Factor Theory: Frank Parsons, Choosing a vocation, Houghton-Mifflin Co, Boston, 1909; John L. Holland, “A theory of vocational choice” in: Journal of Counseling Psychology, 6/1959, p. 35-44; John L. Holland, Making vocational choices: A theory of vocational personalities and work environment, Englewood Cliffs, Prentice Hall, 1985.
[2] Mark L. Savickas, “Career adaptability: An integrative construct for life-span, life-space theory”, in: The Career Development Quarterly, 45(3)/1997, p. 247-259; Arnold, John, “The congruence problem in John Holland’s theory of vocational decisions”, in: Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 77/2004, p. 95-113, Mark L. Savickas, “The spirit of career counseling: Fostering self-completion through work” in D. P Bloch, L. J. Richmond (Eds.), Connections between spirit and work in career development: New approaches and practical perspectives, Davies-Black, Palo Alto, 1997, p. 3-25; Kathleen E. Mitchell, Al S. Levin, John D. Krumboltz, “Planned Happenstance: Constructing Unexpected Career Opportunities”, in: Journal of Counseling and Development, vol. 77, no 2/1999, p. 115-124.
[3] John Arnold, C. Jackson, “The New Career: Issues and Challenges”, in: British Journal of Guidance and Counselling, 25/1997, p. 427-433; S. E. Sullivan, Carden, W. A., Martin, D. F. “Careers in the Next Millennium: A Reconceptualization of Traditional Career Theory.”, in: Human Resource Management Review 8/1998, p.165-185; Jon Schlesinger, Daley, Lauren, “Applying the Chaos Theory of Careers as a Framework for College Career Centers”, in: Journal of Employment Counseling. 53/2016, p. 86-96.
[4] John D. Krumboltz, “The wisdom of indecision”. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 41/1992, p. 239-244.
[5] Jon Schlesinger, Daley, Lauren, “Applying the Chaos Theory of Careers as a Framework for College Career Centers”, in: Journal of Employment Counseling. 53/2016, p. 86-96; E. N. Dredge, “Career counseling at the confluence of complexity science and new career”, in M@n@gement, 5/2002, p. 49-62; Bright, Jim E. H., Pryor, Robert G. L., “The chaos theory of careers: A user’s guide”, in: The Career Development Quarterly, 53(4) / 2005, p. 291-305 ;Duffy, J. A., “The application of chaos theory to the career-plateaued worker”, in Journal of Employment Counseling, 37/2002, p. 229-237; R. G. L Pryor, Bright, J. E. H. “The chaos theory of careers” , in: Australian Journal of Career Development, 12(3)/2003, p. 12-20; R. G. L Pryor, Bright, J. E. H, “Order and chaos: A twenty-first century formulation of careers”, in: Australian Journal of Psychology, 55(2)/2003, p. 121-128; R. G. L. Pryor, Bright, J. E. H., “Chaos in practice: Techniques for career counsellors”. in: Australian Journal of Career Development, 14/2005, p. 18-29.
[6] T. Borg, Bright, J. E. H., Pryor, R. G. L., “The butterfly model of careers: Illustrating how planning and chance can be integrated in the careers of secondary school students”, in: Australian Journal of Career Development, 54/2006, p. 54–59.
[7] Kerr Inkson, “Protean and boundaryless careers as metaphors” in: Journal of Vocational Behavior, 69/2004, p. 48-63; D. T. Hall, “Protean career of 21st Century”, in: Academy of Management Executive, 10/2006, p. 8-16 ; Hall, D. T., “The protean career: A quarter century journey”, in: Journal of Vocational Behavior, 65/2004, p. 1-13.
[8] Ulrich Beck, Risk Society, Towards a New Modernity, London: Sage Publications, 1992, p. 137.
[9] The anxiety associated with career decision making and exploration, a concept created by John Krumboltz in John D. Krumboltz, “The wisdom of indecision”, in: Journal of Vocational Behavior, 4/19921, p. 239-244, Krumboltz, John D.,“Integrating Career and Personal Counseling”, in: Career Development Quarterly, 2/1993, p. 143-48.
[10] Mark L. Savickas, “Career adaptability: An integrative construct for life-span, life-space theory”, in: The Career Development Quarterly, 45(3)/1997, p. 247-259; Mark L. Savickas, Porfeli, E. J. “Career adapt-abilities scale: Construction, reliability, and measurement equivalence across 13 countries” in: Journal of Vocational Behavior, 80(3)/2012, p. 661–673.
[11] Kathleen E. Mitchell, A.S. Levin, John.D. Krumboltz., “Planned Happenstance: Constructing Unexpected Career Opportunities”, in: Journal of Counseling and Development 77, 2 / 1999, p.15-24.
[12] Especially Bauman but also other contemporary sociologists see changement as a main reading key of contemporary world: Zygmunt Bauman, Globalization: The Human Consequences. Columbia University Press, New York, 1998; Anthony Giddens, Consequences of Modernity, Polity Press, 1990; John Urry, Sociology beyond Societies, Mobilities for the twenty-first century, Routledge, London, 2000.
[13] Mary H. Guindon, Fred J. Hanna, “Coincidence, Happenstance, Serendipity, Fate, or the Hand of God: Case Studies in Synchronicity”, in: The Career Development Quarterly, vol. 50/2002, p. 195-208.
[14] E.g. those of Donald Super: Super, Donald. E., Psychology of Careers, Harper, New York, 1957; Donald. E. Super, “A Life-span, Life-space Approach to Career Development.” in: Career Choice and Development, edited by D. Brown and L. Brooks, San Francisco, 1980, p. 197-261
[15] In several of his works, Bauman presents solidarity as a goal to attain in order to prevent lawlessness and the disappearance of social links in contemporary societies: Zygmunt Bauman, Globalization: The Human Consequences, Columbia University Press, New York, 1998 Liquid Modernity, Polity, Cambridge, 2000; Society Under Siege. Polity, Cambridge, 2002 Wasted Lives. Modernity and its Outcasts, Polity, Cambridge, 2004; Liquid Life, Polity, Cambridge, 2005.
[16] Jean-Pierre de Caussade, L’abandon a la providence divine, éd. Michel Olphe-Galliard, Desclée De Brouwer, Paris, 1966.
[17] Dominique Salin, « S’abandonner à la Providence », in: Recherches de Science Religieuse, 2/2018 (Tome 106), p. 199.
[18] Michael Hviid Jacobsen, Poul Poder (eds.), The Sociology of Zygmunt Bauman: Challenges and Critique, Ashgate, London, 2008, p. 147.
[19] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Resistance et soumission, Lettres de captivité, Labor et fides, Genève, 2006, p. 432.
[20] John D. Krumboltz, “The Happenstance Learning Theory”, in: Journal of Career Assessment, 17/ 2009, p. 135-154.
[21] John D. Krumboltz, “Serendipity Is Not Serendipitous”, in: Journal of Counseling Psychology, vol. 45, n. 4/1998, p. 390-392.
[22] Kathleen E. Mitchell, Al S. Levin, John D. Krumboltz, “Planned Happenstance: Constructing Unexpected Career Opportunities”, in: Journal of Counseling and Development, vol. 77, no 2/1999, p. 115-124.
[23] Mary H. Guindon, Fred J. Hanna, “Coincidence, Happenstance, Serendipity, Fate, or the Hand of God: Case Studies in Synchronicity”, in: The Career Development Quarterly, vol. 50/2002, p. 195-208
[24] M. J. Miller, “The role of happenstance in career choice”, in: The Vocational Guidance Quarterly, 32/1983, 16-20; J. Scott, Hatalla, J., “The influence of chance and contingency factors on career patterns of college-educated women”, in: The Career Development Quarterly, 39/1990, p. 18-30; D. H. Hart, Rayner, K., Christensen, E. R., “Planning, preparation and chance in occupational entry”, in: Journal of Vocational Behavior, 1/1971, p. 279-285
[25] “Rather than seeing chance events as random and meaningless, synchronicity provides a framework for understanding and working with such phenomena when they occur. Krumboltz (1998) and Mitchell (1999) called for teaching clients that unplanned events (i.e., synchronistic occurrences) are normal and expected components in the career development process and discussed ways in which clients can generate such unplanned events”, Guindon, Mary H., Fred J. Hanna, “Coincidence, Happenstance, Serendipity, Fate, or the Hand of God: Case Studies in Synchronicity”,… p. 206
[26]Roderick Main, Revelations of Chance: Synchronicity As Spiritual Experience (Suny Series in Transpersonal and Humanistic Psychology), State University of New-York Press, New-York, 2007, p. 2 Jung, C. G. “Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle”, Collected Works 8, Routledge, London, 1991, p. 417-519; Main, Roderick, “Religion, Science and Synchronicity”, in Harvest: Journal for Jungian Studies, 46, 2/2000, p. 89-107.
[27] Roderick Main, Revelations of Chance: Synchronicity As Spiritual Experience, p. 14.
[28] Roderick Main, Revelations of Chance: Synchronicity As Spiritual Experience, p. 2.
[29] Greenleaf, Arie., “Making the Best of a Bad Situation: Career Counseling Young Adults in the Aftermath of the Great Recession”, in: Journal of Employment Counseling, 51/ 2014, p. 158-169.
[30] D. P Bloch, L. J. Richmond (Eds.), Connections between spirit and work in career development: New approaches and practical perspectives, Davies-Black, Palo Alto, 1997.
[31] Mary H. Guindon, Fred J. Hanna, “Coincidence, Happenstance, Serendipity, Fate, or the Hand of God: Case Studies in Synchronicity”, The Career Development Quarterly, vol. 50/2002, p. 195-208
[32] Emmanuel Durand, Évangile et Providence. Une théologie de l'action de Dieu, Coll. Cogitatio Fidei, Paris, Cerf, 2014, p. 7.
[33] Surtout La Somme contre les gentils, Livre III, 64-163.
[34] Emmanuel Durand, Évangile et Providence. Une théologie de l'action de Dieu, p. 138.
[35] Lumen Gentium; Ad Gentes; Gaudium et Spes.
[36] Emmanuel Durand, E., Évangile et Providence. Une théologie de l'action de Dieu, coll. Cogitatio Fidei, Paris, Cerf, 2014.
[37] Emmanuel Durand, Évangile et Providence. Une théologie de l'action de Dieu, p. 9-10
[38] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Resistance et soumission, Lettres de captivité, trad. Bernard Lauret, Labor et fides, Genève, 2006, p. 21.
[39] Emmanuel Durand, Évangile et Providence. Une théologie de l'action de Dieu, p. 28.
[40] Longcamp, G. de, „Évangile et Providence. Une théologie de l'action de Dieu », Nouvelle Revue Theologique, 138/ 4/2016, p. 691
[41] Jean-Michel Maldamé, Création et providence. Bible, science et philosophie, Paris, Cerf, 2006; Jean-Michel Maldamé, Création par évolution. Science, philosophie et théologie, Paris, Éd. du Cerf, 2011, Medard Kehl, « Et Dieu vit que cela était bon ». Une théologie de la création, Cerf, Paris, 2008, Terrance Tiessen, Providence and Prayer: How does God work in the World?, Downers Grove IL, InterVarsity Press, 2000.
[42] Emmanuel Durand, Évangile et Providence. Une théologie de l'action de Dieu, p. 32
[43] Emmanuel Durand, Évangile et Providence. Une théologie de l'action de Dieu, « L’aporie de la démesure des maux », p. 219-245.
[44] Guardini, Romano, Le Dieu Vivant, Alsatia, 1956.
[45] Catechism of the Catholic Church, nr. 302.
[46] Emmanuel Durand, Évangile et Providence. Une théologie de l'action de Dieu, p. 99
[47] Augustine, Confessions, V, 6.
[48] Augustine, Confessions, V, 7.
[49] Emmanuel Durand, Évangile et Providence. Une théologie de l'action de Dieu, p. 123
[50] Michel Olphe-Gaillard, La Théologie mystique en France au xviiie siècle. Le père de Caussade. Beauchesne, Paris, 1984; A. Boland, “Le Père Jean-Pierre de Caussade, auteur mystique”, in: Nouvelle Revue Théologique, 2/1985, p. 238-254, Romano Guardini, “Introduction a Jean-Pierre Caussade”, in: Dieu Vivant 13, Seuil, Paris, 1949, p. 85-96, Dominique Salin, « S’abandonner à la Providence », in: Recherches de Science Religieuse, 2/2018 (Tome 106), p. 199-215.
[51] Dominique Salin, “S’abandonner à la Providence”, p. 209.
[52] Dominique Salin, “S’abandonner à la Providence, p. 212.
[53] Jean-Francois Lyotard, La condition postmoderne: rapport sur le savoir, Editions du Minuit, Paris, 1979.
[54] Margaret Mead, Culture and Commitment: A Study of the Generation Gap, Bodley Head, 1970.
[55] A research on student life at Kansas University: “A Vision of Students Today”, Michael Wesch, 2008, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o
[56] Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Life, Polity, Cambridge, 2005, p. 2.
[57] Richard Sennett, The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism. New York, W.W. Norton, 1998, Anthony Giddens, Consequences of Modernity, Polity Press, Oxford, 1990.
[58] Robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, The Museum of Modern Art Press, New York, 1966, Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1988.
[59] Richard Sennett, The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism, Preface. .
[60] Kerr Inkson, “Images of career: Nine key metaphors”, Journal of Vocational Behavior. 65/2004. p. 96-111
[61] Pape Jean-Paul II, Entrez dans l’espérance, Plon, Mame, p. 190.
[62] Ion Cosmovici, „Oraşul fără Sfârşit, un joc video în timp real. Un parcurs de dezvoltare personală în spaţiul urban”, în Revista de Dezvoltare Personală Unificatoare, nr. 1/2008, Editura Universităţii din Bucureşti, Bucureşti, p. 47–67.
[63] Idem.
[64] Gordon Cullen, Townscape, Architectural Press, London, 1961.
[65] Lynch, Kevin, The Image of the City, The MIT Press, London, 1960.
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[67] L. Lima, «Le temps de la prime-insertion professionnelle: un nouvel âge de la vie», in A.-M. Guillemard, Où va la protection sociale?, Paris, PUF, coll. Le lien social, 2008, p. 49-67; C. Papinot, «En attendant de trouver sa place: le chômage-intérim des jeunes diplômés», Agora débats/jeunesses, n°46/2007, p. 96-106.
[68] Zygmunt Bauman, Globalization: The Human Consequences,. Columbia University Press, New York, 1998.
[69] Danielle Hervieu-Leger, Le Pèlerin et le Converti, Flammarion, Paris, 1999.
[70] Vetö, Miklos, « La volonté selon de Caussade », in: Revue des Sciences Religieuses, tome 61, 3/ 1987, p. 129-160
[71] Jean Pierre de Caussade, L’Abandon à la Providence divine, autrefois attribué à Jean-Pierre de Caussade, Nouvelle édition établie et présentée par Dominique Salin, « Christus », DDB, Paris, 2005, IX, p. 136.