Several
events have come together over the past two weeks that have made me reflect
upon the notion of calling, for which a synonym is vocation, life’s work, or
even mission.
Bishop
Mike asked clergy throughout Indiana to reflect upon our call on Pentecost
Sunday, May 24, 2015. During the months since he encouraged clergy to do this,
I have wondered how I would share. After all, I have told the story in every
church, usually more than once, how I sensed the call of God on my life at the
close of a worship service when I was 18 and attending Miltonvale Wesleyan
College in 1970. It was a quiet nudge, and I am grateful I listened. I had
another nudge or hunch to talk with the District Superintendents of the South
Indiana Annual Conference in 1976 while I was a student at Asbury. I eventually
learned that mom and Pastor Joe Matt, of Austin, MN, had been praying that I
would be open to what they thought God wanted in my life. At that point, I
became grateful for their prayers.
Yet, I have never
wanted anyone to think that a sense of calling or vocation was open only to
clergy. One can find a sense of calling in many tasks, jobs, and careers. One person
who has recently taught me about this is Marcel Proust.
Among the
surprises in the journey of the past few months has been the reading of a long
novel. I started it in the summer of 2014 and did not finish until spring 2015.
I had a long stretch where I had gotten bored, so I stopped. I knew I would come
back - eventually. Thus, it took me a while, but I final read Marcel Proust
(1871-1922) Remembrance of Things Past, more
recently retitled, In Search of Lost
Time. The novel is part of a lifetime reading plan list on which I have
been working since the mid-1990s. Most people, I think, rather than reading all
seven volumes, stop with the first volume, Swann’s
Way. Surprisingly, the lifetime reading plan suggested this. However, this
would be a mistake, for one would miss the primary thrust of the novel. I have
learned that one might adopt the reading hypothesis that the long novel is in
the form of an ellipse, one focus being the search and the second the
visitation. The tale about time is the tale that creates the relation between
these two foci of the novel. The character of the novel arises out of the
apprenticeship to signs (defined by Gilles Deleuze as signs of the social
world, signs of life, signs of sensuous impressions, and signs of art) and to
the irruption of involuntary memories. It represents the form of interminable
wandering, interrupted by the sudden illumination that retrospectively
transforms the entire narrative into the invisible history of a vocation. Time,
which seemed lost in the wandering, becomes something that is at stake again as
soon as it is a question of making the inordinately long apprenticeship to
signs correspond to the suddenness of a belatedly recounted visitation, which
retrospectively characterizes the entire quest as lost time.[1]
Thus, we come to the
second part of the twin foci of the ellipse that is the form of this novel. We come
to the final volume, “The Past Recaptured,” (“Time Regained”). We learn that
the hero of the story suddenly realizes, in an epiphany or visitation, that his
speculation on time has its anchor in the narrative as a founding event in the
vocation of the writer. An epiphany that seems to come from outside Time brings
the hero to the threshold of time regained. Only the decision to write ends the
tension between the time lost/wasted and time regained. The visitation becomes
a meditation on the origin of aesthetic creation. It becomes a contemplative
moment. Time regained in the sense of lost time revived arises out of fixing
this contemplative moment in a lasting work. Artistic creation offers its
mediation. The decision to write transposes the extra-temporal character of the
original vision into the temporality of the resurrection of time lost. Time
becomes the artist that works slowly.[2]
Another way to say this is that the narrator recovers the full meaning of his
past and thus restores the “lost” time. He has no longer wasted the time he
lived, for now it has meaning, as the time of preparation for the work of the
writer who will give shape to the unity of his life. The irretrievable past he
has now recovered in its unity with the life he yet has to live. Here is an
example of how the modern person wants the future to redeem the past, as the
future makes the past part of a life story that has a purpose in the midst of a
life that seems like senseless wandering. One can take up the past in a
meaningful unity.[3]
This narrated unity is one in which Proust has struck a deep chord in
contemporary imagination.[4]
Outside of this epiphany, and prior to it, he cannot bring his life together
into the usual story of achievement. The routines of everyday life seem boring.
Any job career seems empty. Only by cohering in a way that cuts across time,
which joins widely separated moments of epiphany through memory, can his life
have a sense that forms the basis of a recovery of the past that stops the
wasting of time.[5]
For the hero of
this novel and I assume for Proust as well, the sense of calling or vocation
focused on his work as a writer. It indeed becomes the life’s work of the
author. The discovery of something deeper than simply a job or career is the
longing of many people in this technological age.
In fact, a member
of the Cross~Wind congregation suggested that I read a recent article by David
Brooks. For me, it indicates how deeply this notion of vocation appeals to us
today. In describing “a moral bucket list, the experiences one should have on
the way toward the richest possible inner life,” he describes the need for a
“call within the call.”
We all go into
professions for many reasons: money, status, security. But some people have
experiences that turn a career into a calling. These experiences quiet the
self. All that matters is living up to the standard of excellence inherent in
their craft.[6]
Such a notion has
religious overtones. People have a calling from God to serve in their unique
way. The calling may change and evolve over a lifetime. Some may have a calling
to parent young children at one stage, and then have a calling to be leaders
beyond the home. Some may serve God in “secular” careers, bringing their sense
of the divine to work. Such notions are quite “normal” in the world of the
church today.
Several months
ago, I had thought I might preach from Ezekiel 37, the well-known vision
Ezekiel had of a valley of dry bones. The first phrase took on new meaning. The hand of the
LORD came upon me, we find in Ezekiel 37:1. The
expression is frequent in the Hebrew Bible, and is a favorite of the prophet
Ezekiel (1:3, 3:14, 3:22, 8:1, 33:22, 37:1, 40:1). The phrase also denotes the
divine presence in a negative way — the hand of the LORD is often “against”
someone or something (e.g., Judges 2:15; Ruth 1:13; I Samuel 5:9). The
expression has clear directive implications, with the “hand of the LORD”
functioning synonymously with what we would call “divine providence” or “the
divine will.”
For Proust and
Brooks, calling or vocation arises out of you. They have understood an
important aspect of calling. Yet, Ezekiel wants us to turn our gaze away from
ourselves and to the sense of a divine will for our lives. Of course, we may be
good at something, we may need to make money doing something, we may love to do
something, and we may even see the need in the world that we can help address.
Yet, a sense of calling or vocation is at the center of this discussion. I am
not just writing about a job or career. I am writing about my sense of my life’s
work. In doing so, I am asking the reader about his or her life’s work. The sense
of call within a call, the experience of an epiphany, may come early or late in
life, but I hope it will come. It may be a dramatic, unmistakable moment. It may
also be a quiet nudge or hunch that we think might be from God. Am I open to
feeling the hand of the Lord upon me? If I am, will I be willing to follow
where the hand of the Lord leads (nudges) me? This is far more than simply for
clergy, although that is important as well. In any job, in any task we accept, let
it be with a sense that the hand of the Lord is upon us.
Facebook Friend: I liked your thoughts. I think each of us has a vocation that we need tho find.out is what works for an individual. I told many son find what you would for nothing Then get paid for it.
ReplyDeleteThat's what I did.