From my seat on the meditation cushion, I saw neon green leaves outside the window. Blue sky lay between them, with hot pink flowers sprinkled in. I was at a beach resort in Mexico. Was this a ridiculous place for enlightenment?
Christiana Figueres, the architect of the Paris climate agreement, had invited environmental leaders like me to meditate with Buddhist monks for a week. They set strict rules: no phones or laptops, no job titles, and total silence for 16 hours each day.
To say the least, this long, deep training in mindfulness meditation was not the modus operandi for hard-driven environmental leaders. Instead of brainstorming ways to respond to the urgent challenges facing our planet, we breathed together. Instead of planning collaborations, we walked the beach.
In the silence, we settled into an awareness of ourselves and the selves around us. We developed a sense of fellowship with all life—from the people beside us to the plants outside—and we started to feel part of a wave, the wind, a warm upwelling of feeling. Without the pressure of business as usual, we were freed from the expectation of anything but presence.
Freeing my spirit for reflection helped me make sense of a recent professional transition. For 15 years, I had led faith-based movements to fight climate change. In the past few months, I’d made the shift to work in a secular environmental organization.
That might not sound like a big difference. But I spent 15 years praying at work. In those years, my colleagues and I followed the Holy Spirit in all that we did. When things got tough, as they inevitably did, we found renewal in our shared calling to heal humanity’s relationship with our Creator and with the rest of creation.
Beyond the work itself, I also felt called to practice right relationships in prayer with my colleagues. When there was conflict, we prayed together. When the pace was overwhelming, we took a shared retreat. Our calling was not only what we did. It was how we did it.
While my transition out of faith-based organizations was the right decision, losing the lodestar of faith in my day-to-day work brought me deep grief. I’d spent years dedicating most of my waking hours to a job that embodied my deeply held beliefs. How could I find that sense of purpose again?
When you find what you’re meant to do, the work feels necessary, right, and liberating. When you trust the people around you, the burdens of work are light. While in the silence of that retreat, I discovered something that should have been obvious. My purpose does not depend on my job. It depends on my God.
A consistent message of our scriptures is to “love one another, because love is from God” (1 John 4:7). Love means working for another’s well-being. In God’s design, I work for the well-being of those around me and they work for mine. We serve the whole by serving one another.
My purpose, the role I serve in our Creator’s grand plan, is unfathomably simple. If I love, if I give my attention and care to the life around me, then I am fulfilling my purpose.
Was it ridiculous to discover that love is our purpose at a resort? You bet. But then, where to expect enlightenment, if not everywhere we open our hearts to God?
It’s embarrassing to admit that I’ve continually overcomplicated and confused what purpose means. I’m among those whom Solomon complains about when he says, “God made people to be upright—but they’re always looking for explanations” (Eccles. 7:29, The Inclusive Bible).
My teenage son has helped me rediscover an understanding that our purpose is love. Please forgive a moment of bragging: My son is wonderfully compassionate and self-directed. He mentors younger kids. He taught himself to play the piano. He gets glowing letters of thanks from customers of the grocery store where he works. He is a great young man. And he quit high school to begin training as an electrician.
School had always been a mixed bag for him. It wasn’t the academics that were hard. My son entered ninth grade with six high school classes under his belt and left with a 4.0 grade point average. The hard part was social. Following rules, sitting still, making friends in the way he wanted—that was the challenge.
Most of us expect our children to finish high school. I’d imagined my son beaming in prom pictures and hearing us cheer as he walked the graduation stage. I felt a sense of loss for him in knowing that those moments wouldn’t come to pass.
I was also worried. The statistics for those who don’t finish high school are discouraging. I wanted my son to have the best chance of an easy life, and I felt deeply unsettled about his future. It was eating at me.
Then, one afternoon as we drove down the road together, my son told me that he felt happy. School wasn’t right for him. Working in the community felt right. Using his hands and head to solve problems felt right. He planned to get his high school diploma online and then become a certified electrician by the time he turned 18.
As usual, he’d seen a path for himself and was making it happen. He knew I was worried, and he cared for me by sharing his heart.
I started crying right there in the truck. I suddenly realized that my son’s beautiful self—his compassion, his self-direction—was still present. I’d missed out on seeing him, because I was looking for the specific achievement of a graduation cap.
My purpose as a mother reflects God’s purpose for all of us. I love my children. Part of my love is expressed by helping them make strong choices. But that’s not all that love means. The people I care for aren’t their diplomas or jobs. They’re irreducible and beautiful. Knowing them is a chance to know as God knows. Caring for them is a chance to care as God cares.
In that moment, as we drove down the road together, I got a glimpse of the ocean of love that is available through the simple act of being present to one another, as we are, as God made us.
Was it ridiculous to discover that love is the person next to me while crying in a truck? You bet. But then, where to expect enlightenment, if not every place we open our hearts to one another?
Isaiah relates that God says, “For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you” (Isa. 54:10).
God does what we can’t. We can’t exist in a constant state of outpouring love, renewing and being renewed in each moment. If we try, we’ll fail. But there’s something good about trying and failing, about being called back again and again to the unfathomably simple truth: No matter where or when, our purpose is love.
This article also appears in the July 2026 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 91, No. 7, pages 18-19). Click here to subscribe to the magazine.
Image: Unsplash
