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Follow Your Bliss and Other Lies about Calling

It’s funny I’ve written a book about calling. I’ve never really liked the word or its companion term vocation, often used interchangeably to talk about finding one’s purpose in life. They’ve always seemed like abstract concepts propounded by philosophical theologians. Or like an overly pious boast from Christian neighbors sure about their call from God to do this or that, go here or there, sometimes promoting their own good while unknowingly harming others. In general, the Christians I knew gravitated toward one of two extremes, either making sweeping claims about hearing God’s call (evangelicals) or dodging the word as a way to frame their lives (progressives).


I fall more in the latter camp. In fact, as I was writing this book, I questioned at times whether I was, indeed, called to write a book on calling! I worried my effort to bring a lofty religious term down to earth was wrong-headed or unorthodox, or my desire to discuss the hardships associated with calling too negative. One friend suggested I simply avoid the word entirely.

 

“Who wants to be told they’re not living up to their calling?” she remarked. “The word sounds too revered, esteemed, sacred . . . too laden, too heavy, too burdensome.” I couldn’t help but agree. There must be better ways to talk about what we should do with our lives, I thought.


And yet I kept feeling tugged Jonah-style toward the very call I resisted, convinced that the superficial views of calling that dominate religious circles and trendy self-help literature are insufficient and misleading . . . .


. . . I stumbled onto the idea of calling over thirty years ago when I experienced the turmoil of trying to follow multiple callings. As a young mother with three small sons and a full-time job as a seminary professor, I felt called to teach and write but also to parent, and like many women before me and others since, I was torn between paid employment and family, struggling to manage both callings simultaneously. When I went to write about the challenge, however—a book I titled Also a Mother, subtitling it Work and Family as Theological Dilemma (Abingdon Press, 1994)—I intentionally steered away from the words calling and vocation, though I knew they captured well what I meant when I argued that concerns about childcare or fair division of household labor weren’t just about public policy or even justice in the family but involved bigger questions about what comprises a good and worthy life in a society that often emphasizes productivity and self-advancement over care of others. Despite my theological training and faith commitments, I chose instead a phrase borrowed from contemporary psychology—crises of generativity.


In essence my book on mothering was a book on calling, not as women’s sole destiny, but as one important calling among many. But I wasn’t comfortable using the word, and I especially didn’t want to get entangled in the confusion surrounding it. Many Christians still assume the only people who are genuinely called by God are those in formal religious or monastic communities—priests, nuns, monks, and so forth. This bias persists despite sixteenth-century claims by Reformers such as Martin Luther and John Calvin and more recent correctives among Catholics and secular spokespersons alike that following a calling is for people in all walks of life. Meanwhile, the wider public continues to use vocation to refer to skilled training or just one’s job, even though calling and vocation have always been expansive words that apply to the two spheres that I had explored—work and love . . . .


. . . . In this book, I try to do some truth-telling. Seldom are callings straightforward or without suffering. We don’t resolve them easily or early or all at once. Discerning an inner voice or hearing a higher call from outside ourselves is hard work. Callings conflict and compete for our attention; they are seldom singular or monolithic. Nor do callings rest on our own efforts but instead require the difficult navigation of external demands, unwanted pressures, oppressive social dynamics, and help from others. Sometimes vocation is not where “our deep gladness” meets the “world's deep hunger”—the oft used saying of well-known author Frederick Buechner (Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC, Harper & Row, 1973)—but where our “deep sadness meets the world’s deep hunger,” as a colleague with cancer suggests. Buechner himself testifies to the pivotal role of his father’s suicide in the evolution of his own calling as a person and a writer (The Sacred Journey, HarperCollins, 1982). Most important, however, these kinds of challenges and hardships are not a problem; they are an essential element in a life well lived.


. . . . In a word, calling means so much more than seeking gladness, bliss, or profit. A rich variety of definitions arose as I explored each chapter’s challenges and are scattered throughout the book. Among my favorites are: calling as the threefold interaction between joy, talent, and service (with the third aspect deserving more respect and attention); calling as all about time and what we do with the gift of time, an insight that arose as I thought about calling in the face of bodily decline, personal finitude, and human mortality; and, finally, calling as how our living makes us, not how we make a living . . . .


. . . . Even here, however, I’ve had to qualify my favorite definitions. The definition of calling as an intersecting trilogy of desire, talent, and service leaves out an important qualification for discerning and following a calling: income or material survival. Few people can follow their desires, talents, and service and put this matter aside. Only the most privileged, and calling must not be reserved for the privileged. Sometimes calling is about how we make a living. That said, we still need to resist the encroachment of our market economy, which tempts us to misuse the concept to justify ambitions for personal and financial success.


My primary hope in this book, however, is not so much to redefine calling as to revitalize it in a way that helps you the reader and those you care about cultivate the capacity to bear rather than rush to resolve the ambiguities that naturally accompany our callings. Honest talk about the undersides will, I believe, help us “resist the temptation to size up” and dispense with every dilemma . . . .


. . . . Telling the difficult truths about calling—that calling involves bliss and sacrifice—provides a revolutionary way to approach it, not as some idealized or glorified notion but as a complicated, ambiguous, and even painful reality that deserves to be understood in all its complexity and glory. Calling carries a lot of weight; it’s not always enlightening or helpful. So it’s not surprising we’re tempted to lie about it. I imagine I’ll continue to use the word sparingly, even after this book comes out. But I hope being honest about the ups and downs of calling will open up conversation and help pave the way for living more meaningful and purposeful lives.