The Religious Sense at Work is a weekly limited series that explores the way our communal reading of The Religious Sense informs and illuminates our experience of work.

My career has always been rooted in the belief that technology can positively impact people's lives, but I'm also acutely aware of its potential to detract from our humanity. Many years ago, on a visit to the West Coast, Fr. Jose said to us “technology is not neutral” and we should not pretend that it is. Work puts me constantly in front of the basic human desires that Fr Giussani proposes to us in The Religious Sense – both in how we think about the design of our products and in the personalities of my coworkers. There is a sense of excitement and energy that starts from a judgment that technology is positive and has the potential to make life better. In my own life, however, I have also been able to judge when technology is not positive and not helpful to my human heart. This experience has led me to apply some limits on technology for my children: they do not get cell phones until they are in high school, we set screen time limits, and approve all apps (i.e., no social media) on their phones.

This “paradox” between my career and values can at times seem difficult to reconcile, but I carry in my heart Pope Francis’ words to “go out and be missionary.” In addition, thanks to the example and companionship of many Memores Domini friends who also live “in the world but not of the world,” I can be fully present in my work and recognize the humanity of those around me. Everywhere I look, I see people who desire to make a difference and, as we say internally, “have impact” in their own lives and our billions of users.

I work for one of the major tech companies as the Director of Safety and Compliance leading a team of engineers who test and validate our products. Recently I was asked to lead a “Career Circle,” which essentially means a mentoring group, where I facilitate discussions about career growth over multiple weeks with a predefined set of topics provided to us by our employee development team. Without giving it much intentional thought, both the structure of School of Community and the themes we have been discussing in The Religious Sense emerged in our meetings. In an age where Reality is now more often referred to as “my reality”, Giussani’s claim of “starting with oneself" means to observe one's own movements within the context of his or her daily experience. “Hence the ‘material’ of our starting point will not be any sort of preconception... or even a definition of one’s self, perhaps derived from current ideas and the dominant ideology” (RS, 35). Reading this in our School of Community work presented me with a radical proposal that changed my experience in the “Career Circle,” and I began to see each person’s true humanity emerge.

In particular, I think of one individual who recently made the switch from an executive administrator to a network administrator. Though they both include the title of “administrator,” the roles are very different and moved this person from a very human focused role to a technology focused one. He shared his experience of sitting in meetings and having very little idea of the jargon being thrown out by his new team members, describing how he would take lots of notes to try and look things up later to learn or ask what the others were saying. The term “impostor syndrome” is very commonly used in the tech industry as everyone has a belief that everyone else is more qualified than they are and they don’t belong there and will soon be found out. In this person’s case, however, I saw an openness of attitude that allowed him to be free to ask any and all questions. When I asked him why he could do this, he answered “as an executive admin I had to get to know a lot of people and ask a lot of questions, if I didn’t do this, I could not do my job. Why should this role be any different?” I am incredibly struck by this attitude, because I often reduce my questions to what I think will “sound smart” or tailor them to what I have already concluded rather than asking with a truly open curiosity. But instead I want to ask questions in the way Giussani describes: "They require a total answer, an answer which covers the entire horizon of reason, exhausting completely the whole 'category of possibility'" (RS, 47). How much more freeing is this approach that I see in my colleague!

With the help of the education I receive in School of Community, these Career Circles are becoming a place with meaning. Scheduling each of our Career Circle meetings is a real challenge as we all have busy work schedules and it is often difficult to find a time when everyone can make it. I try to do my best to maximize the number of attendees that can make it as this is an “extra” activity rather than a core job role. Yet, it surprised me at our last meeting when one of the members said “I will skip my other meeting, this time together is becoming really important for me”. That sign finally made this circumstance a judgment for me rather than just another thing I was doing for my job.

Many years ago, when discussing the circumstances of a friend, someone told me “it’s because they are stuck at the Religious Sense.” I interpreted this to mean that one’s energy and passion are not necessarily directed towards the Answer. I also need to keep recalling that before there can be an Answer, there has to first be the question. At work, like in the rest of my life, I have to ask myself, am I certain of the Answer and the value of journeying towards it? Am I applying the method correctly? This is why I am truly grateful for our return to The Religious Sense in School of Community. Each time we read it, my infinite desire is reawakened but with a renewed gratitude that I also have encountered the Answer in the Catholic Church. "Let us begin to judge. This is the beginning of liberation" (RS, 11).

Lucas, Broomfield, CO