LIFE IS CALLING
12 March 2006
Chris Bell

“Be careful what you wish for,” the old adage goes. And as you’ve heard several times, I’ve been wishing to be a parish minister for the last six years of my life. Actively training for in Divinity School and so forth, and wishing to be a parish minister for 13 years or so if I think about when the seeds of the idea were first being planted. And now the time is really here. I can not tell you how blessed and how equally frightened I’m feeling. I count myself as blessed because I actually seem to have found my way into a career where my skills and energies and passions match the job description, and I’m conscious of how rare that can be. I’m also frightened because the reality of the task at hand, its challenges and risks and the expectations, are starting to settle in for real. My sense of calling is suddenly a lot less abstract.

Now ministerial work, I think more than any other kind of work is spoken of as a “calling.” Whatever initial impulse that leads someone to ministry is described as “receiving a call,” and even the landing of a job is spoken of as “being called” by a congregation. That’s the topic of today’s sermon.

Now my wife Rita has been incredibly supportive of me throughout my discernment process and my training and my job search and everything. But lately I’ve seen that it has also been kind of hard on her. In contrast to my path through graduate school, which was a fairly direct and steady march toward a goal, Rita would tell you that her experience was more uncertain. The person she first went to study with at the University of Colorado was fired that year. Suddenly she found herself on a different track. She trained for a research position, only to find when she graduated that she doesn’t love doing research. What she loves doing is teaching, engaging with people face-to-face. And so, at this time, when the pieces are falling into place for me, there is a lot of temptation to look with regret upon choices that were made that led her away from the things she’s discovered that she really loves to do. She wonders if she will ever find her calling.

During the search process in particular it’s been hard for Rita to resist making comparisons between my career trajectory and hers and that’s led to some difficult feelings of regret and self-doubt. Now, I’m no stranger to that act: I constantly bring myself down with that same line of thinking. There seems to be no end to the woe that comes to us from the ceaseless setting up of “this” against “that,” of constantly comparing ourselves! “If you look to others for fulfillment, you will never be truly fulfilled,” says the Tao de Ching. Ain’t it true.

Now I think these comparisons and self-judgments that are bringing Rita down a little bit have been compounded by the unique way that calling is spoken of when it comes to ministers, and by the special respect and authority that ministers are granted, even among such a fiercely egalitarian, even occasionally anti-clerical, people as we. I know that doesn’t apply to anyone here.

I’ve heard more than a few sermons and speeches that extol ministers’ great virtue, the long hours, the selflessness, the sacrifices, and so on. But from my perspective, ministry is by no means the only vocation that requires such things. One of the sermons I’ve actually heard, actually described the vocation of ministry as “thankless.” The vocation of ministry is many things, but “thankless” is not one of them. Even a love and approval junkie such as myself, is sometimes embarrassed by how much praise and support you give me. [Don’t stop.] We ministers get our names on the websites, our big smiling face on the front page of the directory, our words reprinted and circulated. When the story of a church is told, I find, its epochs are nearly always divided into the tenures of its ministers. Thankless it is not.

I’ve also attended a number of ordinations over the last couple of years. Remarkable affairs. Outside of inauguration ceremonies for our highest public officials, few people in any career get this kind of utterly loving and affirming event to confirm their call and really just their basic goodness as a person. If anything, you might hope for something like that at a retirement party, but an affirmation at the end of one’s career is a lot different from one at the beginning. I wish everyone could have an ordination; I wish Rita could have an ordination.

So from this position of tension with great affirmation that is coming in my life and this doubt that is present in Rita’s, I find myself questioning what the concept of calling about; what is vocation. Particularly for folks like us: Universalist folk who believe that every person is equally worthy in the eyes of God and that everyone is a potential servant of goodness in love.

I’m going to use those words interchangeably: calling and vocation. They mean basically the same thing. Vocation comes from the Latin vocare: “a calling, a voice.”

There are different ways to define calling, almost in a kind of hierarchy. The most commonplace definition, if you will, is one’s usual occupation, your business, your trade. That’s your calling. A little more serious, or something: a strong desire to do a job, this is from the dictionary, usually one that is socially valuable. I might say one that brings forth our strongest talents, or leads to what we feel to be our most fulfilling actions, or the realization of our deepest intentions. And the dictionary gives another definition as well: A divine summons or invitation; also, the state of being divinely called.

The origin of that expression, of course, comes from the Bible. God is said to have “called” to Moses from the Burning Bush, and calls to Israel through the voices of the prophets to uphold their end of the deal. The notion of being set apart, of having a unique role, or of being led by some divine impulse (that today we might call “following our bliss”) is also very developed in Paul’s letters, although sometimes his notion of call has very troubling aspects as in 1st Corinthinans 7:20-21, “Each one should remain in the situation which he was in when God called him. Were you a slave when you were called? Don’t let it trouble you- although if you can gain your freedom, do so.”

Now that scripture is a topic for another sermon. Few of us today would put calling and accepting being a slave in the same sentence—instead we would see them as being precisely at odds.

The suggestion of these definitions seems to be that the closer you move toward your true calling, the closer you move toward God. There is a divine impulse that you are responding to.

My argument today is that conceiving of ourselves as having a “true calling” may bring us harm as well as benefit. Perhaps this is out of sympathy for Rita. It does bring benefit and if I’m going to spend less time on the benefits today it’s only because the argument that you should find and live out your true calling is utterly and thoroughly represented in about a million career-advice books. I do think the concept of having a calling is useful. It points us beyond money and fame and prestige as the measure of the value of our lives. And we do feel something steering us. Even if we are doing well for ourselves, acquiring fame or fortune, often there is an inner voice speaking of another way, another path. Our head and heart trying to come together. And I think that that happiness or unhappiness that we feel when we are trying to navigate our way in the world is a useful gauge; it is one of the most useful. When I decided that I did not want, in fact, to be a wine salesman for the rest of my life, the final decision came as I imagined myself two years down the line: sitting at Divinity School, writing yet another paper or sitting at the desk writing yet another invoice. And in one I felt happy and in the other I didn’t.

In an ideal world, I think people do do what they love, and in so doing spread good will and happiness to others. Most definitions of calling include some sense of being of service to others. Frederick Buechner described calling as the point at which our deepest gladness meets the world’s deepest need. Yet, to me, this idea of having a true calling of deepest gladness that is perfectly matched with some deep need rests on a theological assumption that few UUs would say they subscribe to. If you believe you have a calling, some particular job or task for which you are made, then you are granting an awful lot of power to the Great Big Thing. Where does that sense that the Universe deliberately designs us for a certain purpose come from? Do we really think the world works like that? Are we, as he prophet Jeremiah claimed, known in the womb before we were born? Are we hard-wired for just one task? What about the fact that we grow and transformation and change over time? Are we free or not?

That question of freedom is at the heart of my critique of the notion of calling.

A good friend of mine spent some time after college trying to make movies. He produced a feature-length film that never found a distributor, although it did get shown at a couple of film festivals. Finding no money in the making of feature films that no one sees, he turned his eye toward making commercials with some limited success. I know him well enough to know that much of this work was done in a deliberate effort not to be involved in the family business that makes fasteners. It had been started by is grandfather, and continues to be run by his father and uncle. Eventually, finding that a professional film career in Cleveland, Ohio is a difficult proposition at best, dependant upon lucky breaks that weren’t coming, he began to do some work for his dad. Now he’s the vice president of sales and marketing, transforming and growing the company, and he says, much to his surprise and horror, that he really likes the work. He’s challenged by it, it brings him joy, and in a way it has healed and transformed his relationship with his father – no small matter. But I think that he probably would not call this work his “calling.” Serving on the board of directors of the Cleveland Film Festival might be his calling.

I think this is the problem. We tend to collapse the ideas of our career and calling together. This has been Rita’s struggle. There are so many other places and ways to find your calling. If you don’t do it in your work, it doesn’t mean you’ve failed.

What I’m concerned about is the ultimate meaning, this ultimate energy that is given to the idea of having a calling as though it has been ordained from on-high. I think we have to be careful about how much ultimate meaning we invest in our work lives. Unfortunately, the career guidebooks don’t really help in this regard.

I found one that is by a fellow named Po Bronson called, What Should I Do With My Life? The True Story Of People Who Answered The Ultimate Question.

What job should I have: the ultimate question? Now I agree that “What should I do with my life?” is one of, if not THE ultimate question, but I’m not convinced that the answer is found in a career change. Even the blurb to Bronson’s book notes that most of the 900 people he interviewed were searching for “a place where they can be content, grow roots a little and make an impact.”

That doesn’t sound like a goal that can only be realized at work. In fact, a place they can be content, grow roots a little, and make an impact sounds like a goal that might be realized here.

In another guidebook called, Finding Your True Calling: The Handbook For People Who Still Don’t Know What They Want To Be When They Grow Up But Can’t Wait To Find Out by Valerie Young, the so-called “dreamer-in-residence” at changingcourse.com, an on-line resource dedicated to “helping you find your life mission and live it”, I found these words in the book (the Internet is a wonderful tool):

True calling. The reason you’re alive. Your personal mission in
life. Your reason d’eter. Your True Calling. If you don’t have a
clue what I’m talking about, take a couple of seconds to complete
this quick quiz: Are you doing EXACTLY the kind of work that
makes you want to leap out of bed each morning excited to begin a
new day? Does your work satisfy a need deep within to express
yourself, your talents, your values, your unique and precious gifts?
Does your work allow for a balanced life— one that leaves time for
family and friends, for exercise or hobbies, for you? Are you doing
what you love and loving what you do?

If you answered “yes” to all these questions, congratulations!
There’s a good chance that you have achieved what the Buddhists
call “Right Livelihood.”

All right, “dreamer-in-residence”, hold on! First of all, right livelihood, one of the spokes of the eight-fold path of Buddhism, doesn’t say anything about doing exactly the kind of work that makes you leap out of bed each day. All it really says is, guided by the ethic of ahimsa, or “not harming” you are to avoid trades in weapons, poison, meat, living beings, and intoxicants.

Secondly, this view of True Calling and Right Livelihood is ignorant of the actual working state of the vast majority of the world’s people. As long as we continue to think that there are people who are closer or farther up some ladder of purpose or divine inspiration, we perpetuate false ideas about the value and contributions of the work of most people. Most working people become the supporting cast in some divine drama whose audition they weren’t even invited to.

What about all the necessary jobs that can’t really be called spiritual callings? What about the bartenders, the car wash guys, the people who make buckets or who assemble shoes? What about the vast sea of subsistence farmers who make up the majority of the world’s poor? Fifty percent of the world’s population still lives in a rural setting. There are many, many, many people who would be content just to find a half-way decent paying job with a minimum wage that isn’t a joke.

To even be able to ask, “Am I doing the work that’s perfectly right for me, that is allowing my inner self to blossom most fully, that will bring me the greatest personal happiness”—to even be able to ask those questions must be recognized as an incredible luxury. Bertolt Brecht said, “There is no philosophy on an empty stomach.” I wonder what the response would be if we tried having a conversation about finding one’s “true calling” with our cleaning crew who will be here tonight at midnight cleaning up after us.

My point isn’t that finding your calling is a pointless quest. It’s just that your calling, our calling, may not be something that can be neatly captured in a job title. We do deserve to be happy, and for the most part, I think combining our happiness with non-harmful benefit to others is a good guide. But the concept of “true calling” may lead us to become suspicious of the many smaller, less dramatic ways in which our happiness and our service can manifest everyday.

That first way I was describing, that Path of Action, where we imagine that we are created for a particular purpose, or that there is one kind of work alone for which we are best suited. This concept depends in large measure on a theological vision that does not appear to be at the heart of our modern liberal view. It depends, instead, on a master plan and a master planner—upon fate even.

The other spiritual vantage-point I’d like to suggest today is what I think the actual Buddhist or Taoist concept of calling might be. I’ll call this the Path of Contemplation. Lew Richmond, a student of Shunryu Suzuki-Roshi and a Zen teacher in his own right, wrote a little book called Work as Spiritual Practice. In it, he explores a Buddhist approach to dealing with a work life that may not be expressing our deepest intention (perhaps some of you have some familiarity with that), but it can nevertheless be turned toward the good. The American writer Logan Pearsall Smith said “the test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves.” What the Path of Contemplation offers, what Richmond’s book is about, is a way to transform our approach to drudgery, if not turn it to love per se, at least to turn it into opportunity for awakening. In this model, your calling is right here, in the present moment; it’s not a one-time, get-it-or-don’t, find-it-or-not proposition.

Instead our calling is about mindfulness, letting go of fear, keeping a light grasp and a sense of humor, trying to see others as Buddhas or the children of God no matter how crabby they are, cultivating good will and transforming negative emotions in whatever context we find ourselves. No matter what the job. This is a way that toll-takers, receptionists, locksmiths, waiters, wine salesmen can pursue. In a contemplative model, it’s not what you do, it’s how you do it that matters. It’s rooted deeply in the present just as it is, a present hat is utterly wide open to possibility. And here there is a theological vision, but it’s not the deistic builder, it’s the Tao, the open, ever-renewing potential of the present reality. Chaper 37 of the Tao de Ching says:

The Tao never does anything, yet through it all things are done.
If powerful men and women could center themselves in it, the
whole world would be transformed by itself, in its natural
rhythms. People would be content with their simple, every-
day lives, in harmony and free of desire. When there is no
desire, all things are at peace.

This calling is one that everyone, regardless of what work they’re doing, is free to pursue. Because it’s all in here. In this way our calling is about an approach to life and its situations as they arise right now and right now and right now. In this model you don’t have to be good, you don’t have to be perfect, you just have to be whole. You just have to be who you are now.

In the end, the solution to finding our life’s calling is, as the true paths of living so often are, a balancing act.

We should see work we love, explore our passions, follow our bliss. We can stop letting fear and doubt run our lives. We should take time, plenty of time, to uncover and explore our deepest intentions, and we should pursue them with fearless energy. We should persevere, trust our experience and trust in the happiness we discover when we find work we love. And, God willing, may we all find it. But we also need to know that the place where your deepest gladness meets the world’s deepest needs is right here. We are free to realize that again and again, as long as we are willing to wake up now. To wake our senses, our reason, our compassion, our conscience, our vision.