Rethinking My Vocation
What if our calling is not something we do?
I’ve been writing about burnout a lot over the past few months. It was prompted by my realization, at the end of the academic year, that I was dangerously close to it. I had two of the three telltale symptoms identified by the World Health Organization: exhaustion and negative feelings toward my job. Like many professors, I love teaching but I am drained by what happens outside the classroom: the bureaucracy, the nonstop email avalanche, and the continuing press of committee work and meetings.
It’s odd that I felt at risk for burnout since I teach and write about it all the time. Plus, I have a robust wellness plan that includes daily meditation, yoga, physical exercise, and massage as well as staying hydrated, eating healthy, getting enough sleep, and spending quality time with my family. Nevertheless, there I was in May, pulling out the self-assessment measures of stress, burnout, and compassion fatigue that I give to students in my “Mindfulness and Self-Care” course. It was time for the psychologist to heal herself.
For two decades, I have known that my vocation is inherently stressful and that my capacity to sustain it is dependent upon taking care of my physical, emotional, spiritual, and relational well-being. Self-care was my way to “fan into flame the gift of God” (1 Tim. 1:6), to enable and support my vocation (even during the periods of my life that I wasn’t sure what my vocation was). Self-care was supposed to be my hedge against burnout. Except it wasn’t. Self-care can help us to cope with stress to a certain extent, but there comes a point where chronic and severe stress can overwhelm even the strongest self-care plans.
I spent much of this summer trying to figure out if my vocation – or more specifically my job as a theological educator – is antithetical to self-care. The question that plagued me was how I might sustain my health and well-being in my vocation as a professor, a writer, and a public theologian. Ultimately, I realized that it was time to change my vocation.
The term vocation is a peculiarly religious, even Christian, one. It first appeared in English in the 15th century, when it began to be used to refer to “a summons from God to perform a particular task or function in life, especially a religious one.”1 In the Christian tradition, we refer to this as our “calling.” For most of the past few centuries, this has meant a call by God to the priesthood, the pastorate, or some other officially sanctioned religious role. In other words, vocation was exclusive and largely patriarchal; it was something reserved for a special group of men who were deigned to lead the church, and perhaps a handful of Catholic women who were called to monastic life.
In contemporary culture, we have expanded our understanding of vocation. For Christians, it now includes any service to the world that we do out of our religious convictions and our unique talents. In a secular context, vocation is increasingly used as a synonym for our occupation or any work that we are regularly employed in. In both cases, vocation has been understood in terms of doing. And not just any doing, but doing that is outwardly oriented, that benefits people or organizations beyond ourselves. Urban von Wahlde, a Catholic biblical scholar, writes: “the notion of ‘vocation’ is born of the conviction that one’s life task can be chosen and lived out in some sort of response to a divine invitation. It is a combination of recognition of one’s own talents as God-given with the conviction that such talents, if used well, can contribute to the betterment of the world.”2
Our vocation, then, is understood as something that we are called by God to do on behalf of God’s mission in the world. There is a sense that we do not have a choice in the matter, that we are compelled – even forced – by God to comply. We tend to view vocation through the lens of the biblical narrative of Jonah, which is frequently preached as a cautionary tale to those appointed to a divine task: either do what God says or you’ll end up lost at sea and devoured by a monstrous fish. We are taught that God is no respecter of our desires when it comes to our vocation, that we have to sacrifice our own aims, desires, relationships, and even well-being on behalf of it. In other words, vocation is God’s way of reneging on the gift of free will that we were endowed at our creation.
For years, this understanding of vocation had me agonizing over getting it right. I wanted to know what specific thing God wanted me to do. I needed to find that thing so I could do it. So that I could be aligned with God’s “will for my life.” So that I could avoid whatever monstrous fish was waiting for me. It took at least ten years before I realized that there was no one thing. The call to Christian ministry is not a scavenger hunt where we follow a series of clues to figure out God’s hidden plan for what we should be doing with our lives. Even in our calling, we have free will. What matters to God is not so much what we do, but how we do it: with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal. 5:22-23).
In other words, vocation is not primarily about doing; it is about a way of being. Mark McIntosh, a theologian and Episcopal priest, invites us to view vocation as the calling to exist. He writes:
It might make sense to regard our whole life as a pilgrimage in response to divine calling, and our particular vocation as a journey into those patterns of life that allow us to be truthfully and wholly the persons God is calling into being…To pursue one’s vocation in this sense, then, means becoming more real, moving beyond a kind of stymied, half-life caricature of oneself. It means moving beyond a response to calling that is merely a biological drive to go on existing and toward a listening, responding, choosing, delighting personhood. This kind of personhood involves the risk of setting out from the self given to us by our biology, or constructed for us by our culture, and embracing the call to relationship with others who stretch us beyond the limits even of what we thought of as our selves, and on into a deeper truthfulness of being. This is the calling, the vocation, that religious thought understands as the calling into being, by virtue of a calling into relationship with God.3
Vocation, then, is an invitation to a journey of authentic being with ourselves, with others, and with God. For the Abrahamic religions – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – our vocation is rooted in our existence as beings who are beautifully and wonderfully created by God in God’s own image and likeness. As the psalmist writes:
You are the one who created my innermost parts;
you knit me together while I was still in my mother’s womb.
I give thanks to you that I was marvelously set apart.
Your works are wonderful–I know that very well (Psalm 139:13-14).
Each one of us is God’s good gift of creation. Our vocation is how we evoke and experience that goodness in our bodies. It is not something beyond us. It is not a religious position, a job title, or the work we do. It is how we experience life in this body, how we cultivate the fruits of the spirit, and how we exist in relationship to ourselves, to others, and to God.
I am God’s good gift. My primary vocation, then, is to steward that good gift with gratitude, to care for myself, to nurture my wellness and wholeness, and to dwell in loving relationship with others. My vocation is not my job.
My vocation is my body.
My vocation is thriving.
My vocation is loving and being loved.
My vocation is laughter.
My vocation is being liberated.
My vocation is dancing.
My vocation is sunshine and perfectly spiced chai lattes and family dinners and game nights and concerts.
My vocation is my life.
Urban C. von Wahlde, “ ‘My Food Is to Do the Will of the One Who Sent Me’ (John 4:34): Jesus as Model of Vocation in the Gospel of John,” in John C. Haughey, S.J. (Ed.), Revising the Idea of Vocation: Theological Explorations (Catholic University of America Press, 2004) p. 53.
Mark A. McIntosh, “Trying to Follow a Call: Vocation and Discernment in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress,” ,” in John C. Haughey, S.J. (Ed.), Revising the Idea of Vocation: Theological Explorations (Catholic University of America Press, 2004), p. 120-121.
I agree that our vocation is no one thing. We are more than what we do and we also are good at more than one thing. We have untapped potential and have the freedom to decide to do something different. Every good work, regardless of what it is, inspires and helps mankind. Even volunteerism, which doesn't bring in a paycheck, makes a huge difference in the lives of other. Thank you for sharing something that we all face at some point in life.
Dr. Chanequa as I prepare to give a workshop this weekend centered in rest and self care based on the things I have learned from Tricia Hersey and yourself, you have come this morning with my sermon for this Sunday and confirmation in a thought I had to share with these women, and helping me to continue on my own journey of rest and self care. Thank you for continuing to do the LAWD’S good work.