Rev. James Martin is a man of many roles: A Jesuit priest in New York who chatted about the Catholic church so often on The Colbert Report that Stephen Colbert dubbed him the show's chaplain; an editor at large for America magazine and founder of Outreach, America Media's LGBTQ ministry; the author of more than a dozen books, including bestsellers such as The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything: A Spirituality for Real Life.

His newest book, Work in Progress: Confessions of a Paperboy, Lawnmower, Busboy, Dishwasher, Caddy, Usher, Waiter, Bank Teller, Assembly-line Worker, Corporate Tool, and Priest (HarperOne), traces the many jobs he held before becoming a priest. It's timed to the 50th anniversary of his busboy job at the Ice Cream Inn in the summer of 1976. That's where he once cleared all the patrons' unfinished meals, not realizing they had merely stepped outside briefly to see a bicentennial celebration ceremonial wagon train roll by.

PW talked with Martin about work, memoir, and his own spiritual journey.

Why do a memoir when you're just 65 and still in the thick of things?

Frankly, in the Jesuits, 65 is still quite young. Why a memoir now? I tend to take my lead from the Holy Spirit to feel what I'm drawn to writing about. I had written several very serious books and really wanted to do something light and fun. A great revelation for me was finding my journal from 1976 that I kept for a year—meeting my 15-year-old self again when my work life began in earnest.

What were the best and worst jobs?

Babysitting was the easiest job because once the kids were in bed, you just ate Oreos and drank Tang and watched TV and talked to your friends, right? And there were no wasps that you could run into like I did mowing lawns. Popping corn at the movie theater was surprisingly bad. And I haven't been on a golf course since my time as a caddy. (The golf chapter is titled "How to Avoid Getting Struck by Lightning When Standing Next to a Bag of Metal Poles.")

One summer, you held down three summer jobs to earn money for college. What did you learn from those experiences?

That you can do these jobs and you can enter into these situations and not know what you're doing, and that it is still okay. Ignorance is not a sin. You just have to say, "I don't know how to do this. Please teach me." I see, in these jobs, lessons in compassion, in grace, in humility, in seeing what dignity looks like. All these jobs really made me who I am.

What did you learn when you used your savings to study business at the University of Pennsylvania?

I learned what I call the Wharton Rule: "Only ask questions that will make you look smart." Nobody asks you what you really want, who you really want to be. They assume, if you're at Wharton, you already know.

Did you? After you graduated and landed work in corporate America, you realized you were meant for a different path, one leading you to join the Jesuit order. In the book, you recall a moment when you were riding your bike to school and paused in a meadow, observing the birds, the flowers, the stillness. You write, "Later, I’d come to see this moment as one of the first times that I felt a longing for God." Is that why you include this interlude in the memoir?

Everyone’s life is a spiritual journey, whether they know it or not. So, while some of these stories may not seem explicitly religious, grace was there, mainly in what I was being taught about life. When I was young, I wasn’t aware of that. Now I am. There are two themes in the book—finding work and finding God. Not everybody remembers a time they sat in a meadow or a garden and didn't realize that God was paying attention, reaching out. But decades later, I still go back to that meadow moment in prayer. You remember the moments you encountered grace.