Call or Calls?

I spent the past three days interviewing candidates for the ordained ministry in the United Methodist Church. My task was to discern and confirm a person's call to ministry. It was an interesting, and tiring, process.

About 2/3 of the 15 candidates we interviewed were beginning their second or even third careers. Having more than one career in today's rapidly changing work environment is very common. I've read that those in college now will have and average of 3 different careers and 9 different jobs.

When we're at the beginning of the work phase of our lives, we often struggle with the question: What am I called to do? This vocational question is important to answer if we are to thrive in life. However, it might be more appropriate to speak of calls rather than a single call.

The pattern I've often seen in candidates for ordained ministry is that they heard a call to ministry early in life, but ignored it or delayed responding to it. Then, in midlife, the call to ministry comes again and it is answered.

I like the idea that we have more than one call in life to respond to. As we grow and change, so can our understanding of what we are called to do and to be. The key is to listen-- to our deepest self, to the voices of others and to the voice of God.

Discovering Your Life Work

The Buddha once said, "Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart give yourself to it." Lately, I've been pondering the question: How do we discover our calling, our life work? My answer is: listen to the voice of your deepest self, your soul.

The voice of the soul is not audible (except in the sense that we can “hear” thoughts and feelings) but can be heard nonetheless if we listen carefully to our inner self. There are several aspects to listening to this inner voice of our deepest self. First, we need to pay attention to our gifts. Everyone has one or more gifts— natural abilities, skills or capacities. For example, I believe that one of my gifts is that of putting thoughts into words and I am using this gift right now. What is your gift? If you don’t know, then ask someone who knows you well.

A second aspect of listening to your soul is to answer the question: What gives me joy? Enjoyment is what keeps work from being drudgery. Reflect on what you are doing when you feel happy. This will offer an important clue to solving the vocation mystery. Another related question to ask yourself is: What do I feel fulfilled doing? Discovering what brings you fulfillment and deep satisfaction is a way of listening to your soul.

Once you’ve identified your gifts and learned what gives you joy, the next step in soul-listening involves discovering your purpose and your passion. Our purpose is our reason for being. Purpose is an underlying force that provides the motivation to define our life goals. We organize our goals around our purpose. The purpose questions are: Why am I here? What am I living for? Answering these questions will put us in touch with what really matters to us and may lead us to find the work that makes a positive difference in our world.

While we often use the word “passion” to mean “intense enthusiasm,” its spiritual roots go much deeper. The Latin root of “passion” means “to suffer.” It’s no accident that the story of Jesus’ suffering and death is called the Passion Story. Therefore, the passion question is: What are you willing to die for? If purpose provides us with a direction or goal in life, then passion gives us the motivation and determination to pursue our purpose. As my friend, Dr. John Tamerin once said, “Passion creates the intensity to fuel our purpose.”

Asking yourself the above questions is a way of hearing the "voice" of your deepest self.

What Is Your Calling?

For the past three days, I've been interviewing candidates for the ordained ministry. One of the things I carefully listened for is a sense of being called to the ordained ministry. I heard a variety of "call" stories, ranging from those who heard an audible voice to those who felt a gravitational pull to ministry.

From a spiritual viewpoint, there is a belief that our life-work can choose us. This work-that-chooses-us is captured in the concept of vocation. The Latin root of vocation is vocare, which means “to call.” A vocation is a calling, a calling not to a job but to one’s life-work. The “voices” that call us to our life-work can come from outside of us and from inside as well.

What are these “voices”? There are the voices of our parents who let us know, subtly or overtly, what they think we should do with our lives. There is the internal voice of reason that enables us to evaluate our strengths and match them with a likely career. There is the voice of emotion that lets us know whether the work we are doing brings us joy and gladness. There is also the voice of our society telling us, “Choose a career in which you’ll make the most money.”

Deciding which voice we listen to and obey makes a huge difference in finding the right vocation. In his sermon, “The Calling of Voices,” Frederick Buechner writes,

"The world is full of people who seem to have listened to the wrong voice and are now engaged in life-work in which they find no pleasure or purpose and who run the risk of suddenly realizing someday that they have spent the only years that they are ever going to get in this world doing something which could not matter less to themselves or to anyone else."

Among the many voices that beckon us to one vocation or another is the voice of our soul. This inner voice comes from our deepest self and is, perhaps, the most important voice to listen to when it comes to our life-work. How do we listen to this voice? I'll try to answer in tomorrow's blog.