Vocation, Calling and Tough Talk

"Vocation is not evoked by your bundle of need and desire."

Dr. William Willimon, p. 54, Accidental Pastor

We spend a lot of time thinking about who we want to be when we grow up. We encourage our kids to plan for their future. Maybe we point out early signs of talent or giftedness and stretch our bony pointy finger to the future with no small amount of anxiety and say, "Child, maybe go thataway..." We take personality tests, aptitude tests and find our strengths. We shore up our weaknesses or at least try to defend or camouflage them. We try to find careers, callings and hobbies that help us find our bliss. My niece Kaitlin dreamed about being a veterinarian and now she is one! My nephew Robby told me once he was going to ride a rocket to Mars - who knows, maybe he will!

The super fortunate among us smash up all these ideas and opportunities and sometimes end up with a legitimate sense of calling. But after obsessing over the writings of Will Willimon, I no longer think calling and vocation should feel like a roll of the dice.

Listen to this quote:

"Vocation is what God wants from you whereby your life is transformed into a consequence of God's redemption the world. Look no further than Jesus's disciples - remarkably mediocre, untalented, lackluster yokels - to see that innate talent or inner yearning has less to do with vocation than God's thing for redeeming lives by assigning us something to do for God."

Dr. William Willimon, Accidental Preacher, p. 54

Think about this. The door is wide open. The needle does not have to be threaded. God wants something from us and our life is the consequence. We're assigned a job. Be a faithful partner - so don't kiss strangers you find attractive and want to assert power over. Be a faithful grandparent - still figuring what that looks like, but I am practicing the role by giving my grandchildren sugar and always saying "Yes". Be a faithful pastor - figure out how to keep serving others even when all you can imagine doing is crying for unending stretches of time. On and on the roles go that we are assigned. Our vocation and calling is not diminished by our lack of enthusiasm or talent for the job assigned. Think harder. See if this clarifies things for you and opens you up a bit to a renewed commitment to practice.

When Calling is Costly…

"Church forces us to march in and sing even when we are not in the singing mood. Church doesn't wait for you to have the proper motivation to worship in order to call you to worship. So many times you don't feel like being a pastor but still must act the part - in pain, over your head emotionally and theologically, not knowing how to publicly mark your own loss. You act like their pastor even when you don't want to...."

Dr. Will Willimon

Yes. This is true. It is also true for being a wife, mother, father, sister, brother, or a line cook. Maybe not everyone has to worry about the theology of their job, but everyone does have the opportunity to wrestle with how their life is lived out theologically.

So here's the thing. Stop and think for a second about this. When your beloved has a medical emergency, do you care if the EMT's who show up in the middle of the night to offer aid find personal satisfaction in their work or do you want them to be good at their job? When your car breaks down on the side of the road, do you want the AAA person to find her bliss in fixing your tire or charging your battery or do you want her to be competent and efficient? When you have to go into surgery, do you REALLY want your surgeon to NOT wear a mask for fear it violates her rights?

More from Willimon...

"The deceit of modern life is the role of individual and stripped role of individuality. There is no YOU there without the roles, the assignments, the relationships. This is a very unglamorous view of service."

I will paraphrase poorly, but this is important. Willimon suggests that to experience a sense of calling, determine to make service part of the requirement of living. And guess what? There is no requirement in a calling that it be meaningful to us before we do it. Calling is not about our fulfillment. It allows other people's lives to be enriched but it doesn't necessarily make our life better. (Can I get an amen?)

Calling costs. It's your choice whether or not to enter into the fray of it all but if you do choose a life of purpose and meaning don't expect it to be meaningful or make your heart go pitter pat all the damn time.

Romancing Our Call

Kate Bowler wrote in the afterward of the book Accidental Pastor, "We devote ourselves to the grand cause of joining God in bringing heaven to earth but mostly we find ourselves doing paper work and trying to find better parking. We want to feel called but we are asked to simply act like it."

We humans are stuck with the incredible contradiction between our high hopes for deep meaning and trapped in the mundane moments of everyday life. I think it's time to acknowledge this and stop trying to wriggle out of the contradiction. It is a noble thing to be a faithful person who keeps trying to believe that God was in the midst of all that.

The weather turned warm for a millisecond last weekend and I took my two grandchildren to the park to meet up with our NSC walking buddies - a new tradition since the pandemic. I knew I could not ask two toddlers to keep up with our crowd but I did want to show up for the party. They headed off on their walk, the kids and I did what we do - Meme toting three backpacks while the two kids alternately ran like the wind and got stuck picking up "treasures" to take to their parental units as signs of their undying love. After our picnic and further exploration it was time to head back to the bathrooms (oh potty training). This took almost as much time as the picnic and "mission" - which the kids call any activity they do with me.

They discussed how to not make the potty flush but once (too loud!); they debated paper towels versus air machine to dry their hands (too loud! but oops no paper towels!). They commented on who had what body part. Finally. We were ready to leave. Just outside the bathroom these two managed to find a dusty, dirty, grassless patch. In unison they yelled, "Bear claws!" and bent down and raked their damp to almost wet hands (too loud so only one burst of hot air for hand drying!) in the dirt. Oh boy. There is absolutely nothing romantic about being a Meme on a solo mission with two little kids prone to whims of fancy.

And yet, it is my call and I love it. I love it because I was once a mommy wrangling three kids prone to whims of fancy of their own. I've learned that the sacred shows up in weird places, dirty and inconvenient times when you are tired and bedraggled and you have to REMEMBER your call because your body is crying for a nap.

Don't miss your call while you seek some whimsical fantasy about what you think calling should look or feel like. It's loud and dirty and grimy and sometimes has claws. But it is also beautiful and sweet and perfect and would be an endless sorrow to miss.

What's a Calling? What's Our Purpose?

The Rev. Dr. William Willimon is an accidental preacher. He's written over 80 books and he was on a recent podcast with Kate Bowler's podcast, Everything Happens Episode 23. How did he become a pastor? "It wasn't my idea."

"We have a God who doesn't take no for an answer..."

In a world that teaches us to follow our bliss, shoot for the stars, don't settle for anything less than your best, figure out what you love to do and do that and you'll never work a day in your life, etc., there is this ancient biblical perspective that has totally gotten lost in the shuffle of all those platitudes and calls for individuality as the gold standard.

We have a life that is not our own. We can find tons of examples in the scriptures but consider the first four that pop into my brain: Moses, Jonah, Jeremiah, and Abraham. Here's what I know. I did not set out to swim in the recovery world. THAT'S the world I vowed to escape as I lay in my bed as a ten year old listening to the crashing of thrown objects against the den wall. I swore I was going to get the 'dys' out of dysfunctional family and never look back. And yet here I am. I am an accidental pastor to a recovery church, a community where the disease of addiction has doubled down and practically required an added heaping of "dys" for the family. The disease does that. I can tell you the facts of how this came to be and how unlikely the events that resulted in this radically changed life experience but I cannot explain how it happened.

"If you cannot explain it some other way, then it might be God," reports Dr. Willimon.

If this is the way God works, then according to Willimon, discernment becomes a very big task. His experience mirrors my own. He says he has days when he is really sure his call is from God and other days when he needs a reminder. The call to be married or someone's friend or a parent or any other role worth having is the same - we go back and forth, wondering: is this my path?

The weird thing about vocation is that it is not our idea; it is God's idea before it was ours. Dr. Willimon's position on such matters is completely foreign to the average American floundering for a sense of purpose and validation for their life choices. An external sense of determination is not a normal way to think about it in North America. When was the last time you heard someone say, "God just tapped me on the shoulder..." Or "I just came to understand the Lord was in this thing." Now, that language has some problems of its own. Sometimes people use God as an excuse to do things that even God wouldn't approve of! But as Willimon points out, there needs to be a definite sense of direction. "I do wonder if for modern Western people like us it's been so long since we have expected address from anything other than our own interiority. Maybe we are a little less adept at saying, 'God's got his hand on me.'" Dr. Will Willimon

At this point, I'm starting to think that maybe we need to think about God's hand on us more often, maybe it would act as a deterrent for putting our hands on other people without their invitation to do so.

Why Do Men Think it is OK to Kiss Women Who Aren't Their Wives?

Lately I've been struck by the number of news reports about men kissing women without their permission. On both sides of the political aisle, among the rich and famous who are not political, doctors, priests, pastors, athletes and therapists. Evangelists. People's relatives. You name it, whatever the role, there is someone out there who has been caught with their hands in someone else's cookie jar. No political persuasion or profession is spared from the relentless opportunity to take notice of all the men (and occasional report of women) who think it is ok to kiss, fondle and grope people without permission . I do not understand this; it baffles me. My grandchildren have a better grasp on body boundaries than this. Which reminds me of a funny story, totally not related to the topic, but what the heck.

When my son Michael was in preschool his beloved teacher Mr. Coley did a typical and lovely beginning to the Sunday school year. He took a long roll of butcher paper and traced the bodies of each of the children. As Mr. Coley was moving up one leg and around to the other, Michael said, "Watch out, Mr. Coley, do not touch the family jewels." I went to visit Wayne towards the end of his life. The first thing he recounted when he saw me was the "don't touch the family jewels" story. Oh, how lovely it is to remember moments of innocence and joy.

Ok, back to the blog. I continue to be puzzled by all the folks who cannot seem to keep their hands off of others' jewels but I do like what Dr. Willimon says on the subject of learning how to be faithful. In his funny, humble way he told the listeners tuned into his podcast interview (Everything Happens Episode 23) with Kate Bowler that as a young husband there were times when he did not feel like being faithful. But he had pledged vows that called for faithfulness. So he acted the part. When he did not feel like being a faithful husband, he remembered - act the role of faithful husband. He said this brilliant thing, "You act the role in order to assume the role." Then, he reports, you wake up one day and you're not having to try to be faithful anymore. Faithful is who you have become by fulfilling the role that has been assigned to you. This applies to the role of spouse, parent, employer or employee - whatever the role, that is your calling. I love his candor AND I love his vision.

I wonder how many men and women caught up in scandals that tarnish their reputation would have avoided such outcomes if they had simply done this: act the role in order to assume the role.