Wednesday, November 14, 2007 at 1:01am
Let your calling find you
Column: New Houses from Old Bricks
I had the privilege of spending last weekend on retreat with Lutheran college students from the "Otas" (Minnesota and Dakotas). The topic of the retreat was one of my favorites to facilitate: "Buried Treasure: Seeking Your Calling, Finding Yourself."
As I shared stories of my own and of other students with whom I've worked on the "treasure hunt" for vocation, one word kept repeating itself.
— Let God speak, both within you and through other people and circumstances. Don't rule out either source of insight.
— Let God be God. You don't have to "see around corners," as they say, anticipating consequences that can't possibly be predicted.
— Let go of your plans, when they interfere with God's plans for you.
— And, on this treasure hunt seeking vocation, let the treasure find you.
One student noticed all these "lets" and commented that such language contradicts what he hears most of the time. Mainly, he said, others advise him, "Make sure you get good grades, graduate from college, and get a good job." Work hard and make it happen, he's been told repeatedly. So, he wanted to know, what's all this about "letting" it happen?
I understood where he was coming from. I remember my early 20s, too, when everyone I encountered simply overflowed with suggestions for ways to "make it happen" with a career, financial security and (particularly important, to my dad) health insurance.
The implication was that without those, my life would never turn out well. Behind that implication was the fear of the worst: What if my life totally fell apart? Behind that fear was the assumption that no one would have a hand in my future except myself — or, I might say, no One.
The language of "letting" comes from different assumptions entirely. It assumes that, in fact, there is some One who has a hand in my future. Instead of fear, it implies a faith in this One who can see around corners where we cannot, and who provides the company, resources and insights we need along the way.
In my favorite vocation movie of all time, "The Legend of Bagger Vance," Bagger says to his "student," the golfer Rannulph Junuh, "There's a perfect shot out there looking for each one of us. All we have to do is get ourselves out of the way."
That sounds great — our vocation will find us. All we have to do is get our anxieties, stubbornness, blindness, and mistaken convictions out of the way, keep taking the next best step, and let things unfold. Easier said than done; that takes patience and self-awareness and a willingness to experiment and make mistakes. So it turns out that letting things happen might actually be more work than making them happen.
But the language of "letting" is much more true to how vocation works, just as Bagger says. Even the secular literature on calling offers multiple examples of people who say they didn't find their calling — somehow, it found them.
Still, plenty of people would be happy to help us become fluent in fear, waking us up at night to worry over a job interview or our retirement plan. But where do we learn the language of faith? Where do we get conversational practice?
At my church, there are plenty of people (I count myself among them) who want to have success and financial security. And most of us are fortunate to have health insurance. And yet we have a sense that we are not the only ones deciding our choices. We are bilingual, so to speak: We attend to plenty of human concerns, but encourage each other to have faith in a God who does not abandon us to our own choices, anxieties and blindnesses.
In the end, I don't know if the inquiring student was convinced, but I appreciated the opportunity for conversational practice in a language of faith I too often forget to speak in my own life.
— — —
Rev. Rebecca Schlatter is an ordained minister in the Lutheran Church (ELCA) in Reno, Nevada. You can contact her at {email newhousesfromoldbricks@hotmail.com}newhousesfromoldbricks@hotmail.com{/email}. © Copyright 2007 by Rebecca Schlatter.
As I shared stories of my own and of other students with whom I've worked on the "treasure hunt" for vocation, one word kept repeating itself.
— Let God speak, both within you and through other people and circumstances. Don't rule out either source of insight.
— Let God be God. You don't have to "see around corners," as they say, anticipating consequences that can't possibly be predicted.
— Let go of your plans, when they interfere with God's plans for you.
— And, on this treasure hunt seeking vocation, let the treasure find you.
One student noticed all these "lets" and commented that such language contradicts what he hears most of the time. Mainly, he said, others advise him, "Make sure you get good grades, graduate from college, and get a good job." Work hard and make it happen, he's been told repeatedly. So, he wanted to know, what's all this about "letting" it happen?
I understood where he was coming from. I remember my early 20s, too, when everyone I encountered simply overflowed with suggestions for ways to "make it happen" with a career, financial security and (particularly important, to my dad) health insurance.
The implication was that without those, my life would never turn out well. Behind that implication was the fear of the worst: What if my life totally fell apart? Behind that fear was the assumption that no one would have a hand in my future except myself — or, I might say, no One.
The language of "letting" comes from different assumptions entirely. It assumes that, in fact, there is some One who has a hand in my future. Instead of fear, it implies a faith in this One who can see around corners where we cannot, and who provides the company, resources and insights we need along the way.
In my favorite vocation movie of all time, "The Legend of Bagger Vance," Bagger says to his "student," the golfer Rannulph Junuh, "There's a perfect shot out there looking for each one of us. All we have to do is get ourselves out of the way."
That sounds great — our vocation will find us. All we have to do is get our anxieties, stubbornness, blindness, and mistaken convictions out of the way, keep taking the next best step, and let things unfold. Easier said than done; that takes patience and self-awareness and a willingness to experiment and make mistakes. So it turns out that letting things happen might actually be more work than making them happen.
But the language of "letting" is much more true to how vocation works, just as Bagger says. Even the secular literature on calling offers multiple examples of people who say they didn't find their calling — somehow, it found them.
Still, plenty of people would be happy to help us become fluent in fear, waking us up at night to worry over a job interview or our retirement plan. But where do we learn the language of faith? Where do we get conversational practice?
At my church, there are plenty of people (I count myself among them) who want to have success and financial security. And most of us are fortunate to have health insurance. And yet we have a sense that we are not the only ones deciding our choices. We are bilingual, so to speak: We attend to plenty of human concerns, but encourage each other to have faith in a God who does not abandon us to our own choices, anxieties and blindnesses.
In the end, I don't know if the inquiring student was convinced, but I appreciated the opportunity for conversational practice in a language of faith I too often forget to speak in my own life.
— — —
Rev. Rebecca Schlatter is an ordained minister in the Lutheran Church (ELCA) in Reno, Nevada. You can contact her at {email newhousesfromoldbricks@hotmail.com}newhousesfromoldbricks@hotmail.com{/email}. © Copyright 2007 by Rebecca Schlatter.