PVMs during the May Sabbath Day at Chicago.

Note: Nicole Engels, Pheonix, is in the middle of her year-long experience as a Providence Volunteer Minister. She has been giving service at White Violet Center for Eco-Justice (WVC) at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, Ind., a ministry of the Sisters of Providence, since January. Sister Jan Craven was the presenter at the May Sabbath Day in Chicago.

Emily Weber has been a PVM since January and is headed back to her Milwaukee home on June 14. She ministered with Nicole, Laura and Michelle at WVC.

By Nicole Engels, 2008 PVM

What do you live? Plan A or Plan B? At the end of May, Sister Jan sat with us and encouraged us to make our life out of Plan A.

Plan A is the life path that really gets your heart going, your big dreams. Plan B is the sensible path; the one that pays the bills and puts food on the table but makes a person live for the weekend.

I doubt that anyone wants to give up Plan A for Plan B but not everyone can be Andy Warhol, Brad Pitt, or The Beatles. But we are told that we have to get the highest paying job that we can, get married, and raise a family. 

Laura and Julie chowing down.

Many times, if we follow our dreams into music, art, or even, a phrase that makes parents all over the world cringe, social service we are expected to forgo the life that our parents have worked so hard to help build for us.

The best road possible is the place where Plan A and Plan B intersect. For example, my father loves to fly. He has been doing it since he was 16 and grew up on an airport. For the last 30 years, Dad has been at the same job designing airplane systems and flying at the same company through its many iterations. Luckily for him, he is an engineer and makes an engineer’s salary. My passions lie elsewhere – in a place with much less of a chance for an engineer’s salary.

But being here at The Woods and working at the White Violet Center is helping me to follow Plan A. I don’t see myself having the security that my parents have as I try to work for environmental justice but I don’t see how anything less is going to fill that place in my heart and mind knowing that I am doing something that I love and something that I know will be incredibly important as we move into the next set of challenges that humanity is going to face.

Sister Jan really impressed the importance of Plan A on us. Society needs people to follow their Plan A just as it needs people to whom the rewards and, often, security of Plan B are more important.

As we lose my friend and fellow PVM Emily this week so that she can follow her own Plan A at the end of this week, I am reminded of the courage that it sometimes takes to leave a secure situation and follow your heart (especially when you are a head and logic based person!). It may be unsure and scary but it is what you need to do to have a fulfilling career and make the kind of significant impact on people’s lives that you know you are capable of.

Thank you Sister Jan for reminding us of the importance of Plan A for ourselves and for society!

And good luck to my cohorts as they head off to Bolivia, Montana, and Milwaukee to follow their Plan A into a lot of unknowns!