You Have a Calling with Karen Swallow Prior

Welcome to all of you joining us for today’s online conversation with Karen Swallow prior on You Have a Calling. We’re delighted that so many of you, there’s over 1300 who have registered have joined us today. We just really appreciate the honor of your time and attention. I’d also like to give a special welcome to our first time guests. I think there’s close to 200 of you or so, as well as our international guests joining us from at least 200 different countries around the globe that we know of. So welcome from across the miles and across the time zones. And if you haven’t already done so, let us know where you’re joining us from in the chat feature. It’s always fun to see where people are tuning in from all over the world. If you are one of those first time attendees or otherwise new to the work of the Trinity Forum, we seek to provide a space to engage the big questions of life in the context of faith, and to offer programs like this online conversation to do so, to both help facilitate reflection on what matters most and to help all of us come to better know the author of the answers. And we hope today’s online conversation will be a small taste of that for you today. One of those big questions that we all wrestle with is is this how do I understand, find, and fulfill the purpose of my life? We all want to make a difference. We all want to leave a legacy. We all want to be who we should be. But the path to doing so, while never clear or straightforward, seems particularly obscured now. Recent college graduates are often given conflicting advice to follow their dreams, yet make practical choices. Land a high paying job but no one to settle. Pursue their passion, but prioritize balance. A confusion which perhaps represents some or reflects some of the floundering of their elders. The result is that both recent college grads and perhaps most of us, are, by many measures, more confused and uncertain than ever as to what it means to live into one’s vocation in a new and delightful book. Our guest today dives deep into what it means to have a calling. She argues that we each have many callings, and they’re fundamentally different than a job, a career, or even a passion. And she shows how the fundamental and transcendental virtues of truth, beauty and goodness offer illumination and a pathway towards pursuing one’s own particular call and vocation. Karen Swallow Prior is a scholar, author, columnist, longtime professor of literature, and I am proud to say, a Senior Fellow of the Trinity Forum. She’s been a frequent writer on literature, culture, ethics, and ideas for The Atlantic. The Washington Post, First Things, Vox, Christianity Today, and The Dispatch, among many other outlets, and serves as a monthly columnist for the Religion News Service. She’s also the author of several works, including Booked Literature and The Soul of Me: Fierce Convictions The Extraordinary Life of Hannah Moore. Her wonderful book On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life Through the Great Books. Her excellent work, The Evangelical Imagination, which we hosted her here a couple of years ago to discuss, and her just about to be released book coming out on Tuesday. You Have a Calling: Finding Your Vocation in the True, the Good and the Beautiful, which we’ve invited her here today to discuss. Karen, welcome. So, Karen, there are so many books out there on vocation. I know you have read a lot of them. We’ve talked about this and yet many of them just seem to add to the confusion or uncertainty about what it means to find and discern one’s calling, one’s vocation, one’s purpose. What specific problem are you seeking to address with your new book?

We do live in a time where especially young people are getting so many distorted messages about calling. And of course, I’m coming from about 25 years of teaching college undergraduates and having conversations with them about their calling and their work and their vocation and their education. So I’m drawing on those conversations. But this book isn’t just for them. We are living in a time in the same time, though, and so we’re all receiving these distorted messages about calling. And so I think one of the great distortions we have is that our calling, our vocation, our work, is supposed to fulfill our passion. It is supposed to also do that while bringing lots of money it is supposed to bring us meaning and identity and purpose to our lives. And of course, our callings can do that. Our work can do that. But what I try to do in the book is to separate out all of those categories and to show that, first and foremost, we have multiple callings in our lives. It isn’t just about work, it’s also about our relationships and our families, our relationships with our neighbors and in our churches and communities. Those are all callings. Our work can be a calling, and but sometimes our work can just be a way to provide for ourselves. And so perhaps setting up more realistic expectations and clearer definitions of how all of these things work in our lives will help us to actually fulfill the callings we were truly made for, and not the ones that belong to other people that we see, um, images of around us every day. Obviously, we live in a digital age, and so there are lots of distorted messages sent by social media, especially influencer culture. And this isn’t limited to just the surrounding culture. I think the church has, you know, has has imbibed a lot of these messages and distributed them, and that we have this sense that we’re supposed to accomplish big things for God, great things for God, do dramatic things and have a huge platform and wield a great deal of influence and change the world. And there’s nothing wrong with any one of those things, but most of us are going to live ordinary lives and do ordinary, everyday work, and we’re going to make the biggest difference in the lives of people who are around us. That may not ever make social media or make history  in headline writing ways. But these are the things that most of us are called to. And the way that we can, um, fulfill the gifts that God has given us and the opportunities that he has placed in front of us really are a lot of books on calling. I know I had to read a lot of them, and there are some that do a wonderful job of talking about it. But I think that we just even in the past few years, we have reached a different time period when we have a confluence of the impact of social media, um, and sort of the excesses of, of late capitalism and late modernity, where there’s so much materialism that’s driving our decisions and so much of a distorted sense of what it means to be successful. And so much sort of, of trying to keep up with, with the Joneses to use an expression, an old expression. And so young people in particular have all these images propped up before them and expect that they are going to, you know, immediately upon graduating with a $100,000 debt, get a job that’s going to pay off that debt, that’s going to fulfill their passions, provide a great income for them, and none of that is happening for 99% of young people. And so we’re living in a time where frustrations and anxiety and disillusionment occur simply because the the expectations that have been set up are distorted and false. But this isn’t just young people. I want to emphasize that when I began talking about this and giving this talk at different places around the country, I would often give this talk to audiences of of of adults in their 30s, 40s and 50s who are already working and who are far beyond the college age. And yet they too are getting this message that they somehow have missed out. If they haven’t become a tremendous influencer or aren’t making a headline making impact for the Kingdom of God. And very often women in their 40s and 50s who perhaps stayed home during the child rearing years and feel like they didn’t have an exciting or dramatic calling and haven’t made a difference. And my book is there to tell them. Know you had and continue to have a crucial calling, making a difference in the lives of the people around you, which is what most of us will spend our lives doing. And so our callings end up, for the most part, looking much more ordinary, much more mundane, and much more like everyday life. And that’s not a bad thing. It’s actually a wonderful thing. And I want us to be able to see the beauty and the goodness and the truth in that.

Yeah. You know, one of the things that was I found interesting about your book is right off the bat, you distinguished between calling, vocation, career, job, and passion. And, you know, there is a tendency and certainly an aura that’s kind of understandable thinking  one’s passion is one’s purpose. Sounds very romantic and dramatic. What do you see as the differences between passion, job, career and calling?

Yeah, that’s a good question. I mean, I have been an English professor for many years, and so I’m a word person. And so that’s one of the first things I do is start out with defining the terms. And there can be overlap and there can be tremendous overlap in all of these terms. But the point is that they are different things and they don’t always overlap. And so a job is something that we do to provide income because we all need to have a roof over our heads and food on the table. And, you know, whether we’re living in a household where many people are contributing to that or one person is a job is necessary to survive. Work is something we all have to do, whether it’s paid or not paid. And even the things that we enjoy doing for fun require some effort in some work. And a career is a job that we’re passionate about, that we want to pursue, that we’re hoping will lead to something longer term. And perhaps we’re using one position as a stepping stone for another. So a career is a little bit more than a job, but a calling or a vocation. And throughout the book I primarily use those terms interchangeably. But a vocation is something that someone else has called us to do something outside of ourselves that we can’t help but do because we are pulled and drawn to it, and that for some of us, that is the work that we get paid to do. But for some of us, it’s the thing that we do on the side after we’ve brought home a paycheck. And we will never stop doing it because we we enjoy it so much or we feel such a sense of purpose. Um, it could be a ministry, it could be a hobby. Those could be those actually can be our vocation. But our primary point I make is that we have many callings. And so even our relationships, our positions and family. We’re called to be parents. We’re called to be daughters and sons and siblings and neighbors and citizens. These are all callings as well, and most of them are ones that we don’t even choose. We just are. They’re part of our situation and our placement in life, and we still have to, um, fulfill them. Well, because God has called us to them and our in, in the situations and the places that he puts us.

You know, I want to kind of dig into that for a minute, but but first I kind of want to just ask you, you mentioned a lot of the callings are ones that were born into, but there’s still some we we discover or we discern or we hear, um, how does one do that? How does one, you know, the callings that one has not just kind of inherited by by virtue of their rootedness and their relationships? How does one hear and discern those callings?

Yeah. I’m glad you used that word hearing, because this is a primary point I make in the book is that, you know, while we feel passion inside us and we have gifts and abilities that are part of who we are, calling comes from outside. Calling requires a caller. This is a common theme in these books, and I and I also agree with that. So calling comes from outside. And we have to listen for it and hear it. And so there are many things that we can be attuned to in order to discern that call. One is our passion. Although we aren’t always necessarily passionate about the thing we’re called to, but hopefully we are – that can be a guide. Our gifts and abilities can be a guide. The people in our lives who encourage and affirm what we’re able to do can be a guide and also, the needs in the world at any given time. You know, we often think of the expression of being born in the wrong age or an old soul. Sometimes there are things that we wish we could do or lifestyles we’d like to lead that just aren’t possible in the time and place that we live in, and that can be frustrating and disappointing. And yet we have to look to the place that we are in and see how our particular gifts and abilities and how the needs of the world and the needs of the place that we live in can be served by the things that we are able to do. And so there’s a lot of discernment that that’s required. But also, I think an understanding that, um, just because we’re passionate about something doesn’t mean we will that will become our paying job. And just because we’re passionate about something doesn’t mean that other people have that need in this world. But again, because we have multiple callings, we can keep trying to discern and move toward that. And eventually we will find those things match up, I hope.

You know, one of the other questions that raises is one may have multiple callings, but time is zero sum. And one of the things you talk about sort of later in the book is, you know, the call is doing the work. Well, doing it as unto God. You mentioned Dorothy Sayers and her wonderful essay, “Why Work?” Christian work should be work well done. To the glory of God. Well, you know, one of the challenges, uh, one can have multiple callings, but. But time is limited. And it is. It’s not humanly possible to fulfill multiple disparate calls all excellently and well. How does one think about the trade offs that are involved with balancing multiple things? You and I both know that one of the very widespread and deep, often really painful frustrations is for for women who are called to be, to call to be mothers. They’re often caring for ailing parents. They have a job that they feel called to. There’s too much to do. Much less to do it all well. How does one think about calling in that kind of context?

Yeah, the what you described really is a reality of the this world that we live in, which I referred to earlier, is late modernity. If we think back to ages past when there were few choices that if you were born into a particular time and place in class, you were destined to do X, Y, and Z. And if you were in a different place in time, you were destined to do something else. And now we have abundant choices in front of us, and abundant things pulling and drawing us. And so that’s just the nature of the time and place we live in. And I think that we have to be intentional about recognizing the demands of this world and also being thoughtful about how we can resist and live in a in a way that is counter to the culture when it when it can be unhealthy. One of the things I say in the book is that I think a gift that the millennial and younger generations have given us is that they are pushing back against the sort of workaholism that defined some older generations. You know, sometimes it gets mocked. This whole idea of of work life balance, but whatever you call it, I think that’s actually a healthy thing. Another distorted message that has been given particularly to older women and middle aged women is this idea that you can do it all. That’s a myth as well. And so having basically interrogating the myths and assumptions and the slogans and the sayings that we’re surrounded with and asking ourselves is this is this really true? And does it even work for me in my life? And sort of scaling down? Not our expectations, but our our understanding of what it means to be who we are called to be. And to focus on quality over quantity and to focus again, as I as I say later in the book on the things that are true, good and beautiful in such a way that it all meshes and comes together in a holistic way. I think that if we’re intentional about that and, and recognizing the wrong messages that we’ve been surrounded by, we can focus our journey in the right direction.

Wow. You know, another question that comes to mind is probably most of us throughout some part of our life have had, whether it’s an a talent or an interest or a gift, that we feel that we’ve been given for whatever reason and to offer it and circumstances seem conspire to prevent its expression. And sometimes those circumstances are just – it’s just the situation we find ourselves in. There are other times, whether it’s because of individual systems, they are more of decisively repressed. How does one think about calling? If one is, like, embedded in a situation where one gets what one feels like one ought do, but there’s not expression for it.

Yeah. I mean, we we live in a fallen world. Of course we know that. And yet, somehow, one of the most hurtful and disappointing things can be when our own particular gifts and the things that, as you said, we feel like we can offer to the world are not accepted or rejected or are repressed. And so I think it’s helpful – And that’s just going to be a reality at some point for most of us. And so I think it’s helpful to – and this is part of why I wrote the book. I want us to have a much more expansive sense of calling and vocation and to realize that, you know, we often think that if we have a gift or skill, it has to it must be delivered in this particular way, because that’s the only way that we’ve seen it delivered, or it must be in that particular place if we have a calling and a gift. And I’ll use some some broad examples, such as, you know, my own, which is teaching I love to teach. And I am in a situation not necessarily really by my choice where I don’t have a classroom anymore, but I am still teaching. I teach through my writing. I teach through my speaking eyes, hopefully teaching a little bit here and in this kind of online conversation. And so I’m still using my gift. It’s just in a different way. The demands of the world, and sometimes they’re just simply the demands of the marketplace. That can get saturated or and it can or it can have a, you know, a market that that needs to be developed. These are realities that do hinder our gifts. And then, of course, other people hinder our gifts when they don’t. For some reason, what we have to offer. And so we have to be creative and expansive and diligent. If this is our calling, we can keep working at it, and it will eventually bear fruit. But it can be very frustrating in the meantime. That’s one of the things I do in the book. Since we haven’t gotten to this point. But we’ll illustrate this well is because I love literature. I include a lot of literature in it, and one of the poems I include on this poem on this point is by the 17th century minister George Herbert, who wrote a poem called “The Collar” and meaning the clerical collar and other things. But the whole poem is him crying out to God because he feels like his calling is bearing no fruit. And the poem resolves not in his recognition that there is fruit that’s being born, but his recognition that God is in charge of it all. And I know it’s a sort of Sunday School answer, but if we are giving our gifts to God and trusting him with the results, then we really are truly pursuing our calling.

So I know you talk about function in the context of the transcendental truths of truth and goodness and beauty. What made you decide to take the approach?

Well, there are a couple of answers to that question. One is that I love to talk about truth, goodness, and beauty. I do that in teaching my literature classes and aesthetics and so forth. So any chance I can take or make for myself to talk about those transcendental, I will do that. And in some ways, this book was really just a sideways way of talking about truth, goodness and beauty. But not really, because this book started out as a small talk that I gave on how we are all called to be creative and creativity has a much again, like calling has a much wider, broader definition than we tend to think of it, because we are bearers of the image of a creator God, who does create and created us. We are all called to be creative as well, and not necessarily in ways that are. You mean we we make a painting that gets put on a museum wall, but simply in our own everyday lives? There are ways that we can reflect our Creator God by being creative. And so when I turned decided to turn this small talk into a book, I thought, well, really, it’s not just that we’re called to be creative, but we’re called to do the best that all creation does, which is to display truth, goodness and beauty. And so, in a way, my argument, my entire argument about vocation and calling is that if we pursue the true, the good and the beautiful, we are already fulfilling the calling that we already have in general. But in that journey, we will also find and fulfill our particular calling, because those transcendentals have their source in God himself, and they reflect his nature and character. And so all we’re doing when we pursue those three things is we are pursuing God, and we are trying to reflect his character.

In just a few moments I’m going to take questions from our audience. But before we do so, I want to hear from you after going through this whole process of writing this book, as well as reflecting on topics for, for many years, what counsel you would give both to recent college graduates who might be thinking about kind of what’s next, to those in, say, mid-career age who feel like they have not yet found what they were fed to do, and perhaps also to employers who, you know, would probably like to cultivate and encourage the people who are working for them, but are also there are certain things that have to be done, whether or not that someone’s calling, much less passion. What practical counsel would you give to these three groups?

So I would give again the council that calling is a bigger, broader category than we might think of it. And we are fulfilling callings in more ways than we might think that we are. And so that means that if you’re sort of on the starting out end, you can hold things loosely and pursue not just your passion, certainly do that, but pursue the sort of doors that open their way for you. Because one of the researchers that I cite in the book, Cal Newport, actually, his research actually shows that when we become good at something and competent and confident, we actually grow passionate about it. So explore and learn and let yourself become competent at things, become skilled and become a craftsman at something. And you will find that you become passionate about it. To employers, I would say the same thing from the other end to let employees. Of course there are jobs that need to be done and they need to be done well. And not all of the tasks are, ah, fun or fulfilling. But there are ways that you can allow employees to take on additional things that might allow them to use their their passions in different areas of the job. And at the other end of life, we can look back, I think I think, for example, and I mentioned this in the book of my my 88 year old mother, um, who passed away last year. She was in her 80s before she realized that spending her whole life teaching Sunday school, wherever she and my father happened to live in their sort of nomadic lifestyle, was her fulfilling her calling to be a teacher, even though she had never studied or trained her, that she had done it her whole life and looking back, realized that that was her calling. And so, again, I think that we, we just have this romanticized, dramatic, idealized way of looking at calling, which helps us to actually miss the callings we’re fulfilling in ordinary, everyday ways right here and now. And we’ll continue to as, as we journey along in life and, and and God will use it all and will be able to look back and say, wow. When I was doing this one thing, I didn’t realize that it was going to lead into something that was truly my calling. In God’s economy, it all comes together.

You know, before we go to audience questions. I’d love to hear you talk a little bit about your own journey and that you’ve had just certainly professionally. It seems like several different callings. You’ve had different twists in the road. And you’ve had to be quite creative in terms of how you express the talents of and passions and gifts that that you’ve been given. What have you learned over the course of your own journey?

I do hope that it comes through that I’m writing this book from, you know, from my wide research and and reading, but also from my own experience, it’s authentic. I’ve really lived these things and at the beginning end of my adult calling, I would say that I had no idea that I would be a teacher. It was actually literally the last thing I wanted to do when I was in school. I did not want to be a teacher, and only sort of accidentally discovered along the way as I was studying English literature and decided to try teaching a class that I loved it, and I was good at it, and I feel like it was what I was created to do, so I had no idea what my calling was at the beginning. I stumbled upon it, had a, you know, decades fulfilling that calling and then, you know, living in this, in this world where everything is just sort of politicized and polarized and, you know, ultimately had to make a choice between that vocation and some of the other callings that I have in my life, which I think are, you know, I have a calling to to speak up and to say things and to ruffle some feathers, and I had to choose between those callings. And so I did so. But I still think, as I said before, that I’m still fulfilling the calling of being a teacher and teaching, um, and in different ways. And along the way, I’ve had the calling to be a wife and to be a daughter. I thought I would be called to be a mother because I that’s what I always wanted to do, and that didn’t work out. And so I, you know, the Lord opened other callings up to me. And so I’ve learned along the way to hold them loosely and to follow the callings that were where I was clearly hearing the Voice and to put behind the ones that I might have had in mind and thought were for me, but didn’t turn out to be for me. And it has been a twisty road, but I you know, I, by God’s grace, I feel like that I am doing what he wants me to do and finding great fulfillment in it. Most of the time it can be a little scary, but it’s an adventure.

Well, the questions are all piling in. So we’re going to turn to our viewers. And the first comes from an anonymous attendee who says, “I am reconciled things one, on one hand, having this overarching thing, a gift and vocation, that thing you do that fills you up and you can’t help but you say and do. On the other hand, there may be different calling for different seasons of life. How do we balance those two things and that tension as we go for years?”

Yeah, I mean, I think a simple way of looking at one fact about calling, and I say this in the book is to recognize that some callings actually do end. It can be as simple as, you know, if if you are married and your spouse dies, then your calling to be that person’s spouse has ended just as a result of of death, literal death. Other deaths can and other relationships. And then metaphorically, there can be deaths of other things that bring an end to a calling. So one way of looking at it is that, you know, callings can change over the course of our lives. They can take different forms, as I’ve described, but they can also begin at any stage in life, a new one. And they can also end. And there may be woven throughout that, that one thing that we we must do. But but another point I make in the book is that sometimes our passions and desires do change. And so just recognizing sort of the transience of it all and embracing the calls. When they are there. And while they are there. But being open to others that might come along because life on this earth is transient. And so our callings can be as well.

Yeah, in some ways, that’s a great segue way to the next question from an anonymous attendee who says, “You said that calling is usually something we’re passionate about. What about there’s a clear sense of calling towards something for which there’s little passion. Can you say some words about that, please?”

Oh, yes. And I do want to say that calling, if we look over the course of human history calling has not been something that most people are passionate about, because most callings are ones that they have little choice in and just simply had to do to survive. And so in our particular, you know, contemporary American context, we have a lot more choices. And so often we do pursue the thing that we’re passionate about. But it is absolutely true. That’s the perspective I want us to have, is that, um, we are often called to do things that not only we are not passionate about, but we might not even prefer to do them. If we are put in a place where we have to care for someone close to us who is sick. We we must do that. We may not enjoy it, but it is something that we are called to do and hopefully we would not make any other choice. Sometimes it is a job. I when I was in academia, uh, and I was called to chair the department. I do have some administrative abilities, but I dislike administration very much. I fulfilled the call. I did my my term, and then I was done. And but because we are our callings are used. And this is a this is a point of of great Protestant Reformation theology. God gives us callings to serve our neighbors and to steward this world. That’s what they are there for. If, incidentally, we develop a passion and a love for it, that’s a great blessing. And we, of course, all want that. But much of the work that we have to do and must have, many of the callings we have to fulfill, are not ones we would necessarily choose. And we may not always be passionate about it, but we can still find meaning and purpose and fulfillment, even in the hard things that might not have been our choice.

Now, you know, hearing you talk, I’m sort of curious how you would distinguish between that and the idea, which I don’t think you’re saying, that the need is the call.

Oh, yes. I mean, we we we just because someone asks us to do something does not mean that we are the one to do it. And we do have to be careful. Again, this is part of the discerning the call because, you know, there are times we might be parts of communities where where the need is great and we could be asked to do 100 different things and we can’t do them all. And so we have to be stewards of the call of the calls that we have. And it’s not not everything that we do as a call. Some of the things are responsibilities. They’re tasks. And they have to be done. And we have to do those. And, and in the course of fulfilling what we might see as our primary calling. And so we have to again, there aren’t any easy answers, but we have to be mindful of balancing that tension between filling a need that is there when we are able to do it and we can do it, but also not filling a need that will cause us to neglect something else that we are called to and must do. It’s all about balance. And again, just because of the nature of the late modern world we live in, uh, most of us are getting more demands than we can possibly fulfill. And that’s just part of what it means to live in this time. And we have to steward the time that we live in as well.

So a question from Nathan Swanson, who asks, “What can local congregations do to help parishioners discern their callings and equip them to steward their callings well?”

That is such a good question. And so I there are so many things that that a church can do. Even just as simple as and I think most churches do it, but I think it’s really important and helpful is to, you know, to give the sort of spiritual inventory tests so that people can know what their gifts are and pursue using those, and to understand, again, this broader, more expansive understanding of calling that, yes, God gives us gifts to serve the body, but that might not necessarily be limited to the hours that the church meets on Sunday and Wednesday, the members might be able to serve the church in the community, outside the church walls, or even inside the church walls. I love churches that have book clubs. Because I love book clubs. That’s not necessarily Christian books. There can be, you know, there can be other kinds of books that that can expand and grow people spiritually or ministry being involved in ministries that serve the community. Every single gift that we can use in our lives. If you’re a math tutor, you can use that gift in the church as well. And the church can support you not only in the church, but outside the church. And so I think the church has a great role in encouraging people to identify and use their gifts, and also to use them in an expansive way, um, that serves neighbors as well as the body.

So question from Margaret Cotton. Margaret says, “At 76, my messages are challenging as the world changes so quickly from the world I had sort of mastered. But I know I have a calling. The challenge is to be able to move towards it without the obvious tools some of the younger people have to do so. How do I find motivation?”

Well, I offer the comfort that I think a lot of us feel disoriented in this world. If we’ve lived long enough, it has changed a great deal. Sometimes if you lack motivation, it could be because that is not your passion or your call. But sometimes a lack of motivation can be frustration and perhaps not knowing how to move forward. And so, you know, it’s an answer. I give a lot in different situations, but I do think community help. So finding a community of like minded people or people who are working on the same things can help us to understand, you know, maybe we can get past the obstacles that we’re faced with or, you know. I know a person who sort of joined a community of writers and through that discovered, you know what? I’m not really a writer. I don’t know why I thought I was a writer or enjoyed writing, but I really don’t. And so she has pursued a completely different area of using her gifts. And so sometimes it’s just we, you know, we have to find out who we really are by being in community with people who are pursuing a similar thing to to learn whether that really is our thing or if perhaps it’s something else.

So many questions coming in. I’ll take one from Grant Jocelyn, who says, “Your useful talk focused on people, younger retirees. What is your advice and encouragement for those of us who are approaching the end of the road, so to speak. Does calling run out?”

Oh, I know calling does not run out. And if I ever write a part two of this book, it will be more focused on the end of life. As I was facing that in the with my dear mother at the end stages of writing this book. And I think of my own widowed father now who is reaching out to people in a similar station in life in his church, and they are reaching out to him. He’s spending time getting to know neighbors more, which in this day and age is really a rare thing. We few of us do that in this hurried age. And and then I think of, you know, not just me as his daughter, who you know, he has a calling to, but even the children and grandchildren to whom he is so important. So again, because we live in an age in a time that emphasizes productivity so much, it can feel like calling is always connected or most often connected to productivity. But calling is connected to relationships, and it’s connected to wisdom and experience and knowledge that comes only with years. And how important is it? To pass that kind of wisdom and experience on in whatever ways that we can, that have nothing to do with clocking in or being productive? There are just so many ways to be that can fulfill a calling. It’s not just doing, it’s being.

That’s great. So Edith Bogue asked, “We often think of calling as leading to visible activities. Could you talk about the call to contemplation, to spending time with God so often seen as lesser or unimportant by society, but the bedrock of so much of the holy men and women whose lives we admire actually did?”

That is such a good question, and it dovetails nicely off of the last one, because there is actually a short sentence that I write in the book that or I have a series of rhetorical questions. And so I ask, what if calling isn’t just about what we do but how we do it? I actually think in our time and our age, we need to put more focus on the how rather than the what, the way of being. And this question about the active life versus the contemplative life has been one that has existed throughout human history and in different ages and in different forms. And so we still have that question. You certainly won’t find me saying that it’s less valuable and less important, but it’s certainly in a culture that is, you know, consumerist and materialistic and emphasizes productivity. As I said, it can feel that way.There’s so many things that can’t be measured and that aren’t tangible. And we live in a culture that wants to measure and count everything. So my encouragement is just to be countercultural in this way. And how we are. And that quiet, contemplative, deep, deep life is a calling. And if you if no one believes that, then just check out how popular Wendell Berry is. Right? He exemplifies a way of being and thinking. And of course, so now he writes books about it, so that’s a little bit productive. But we can still follow his model. We don’t have to write the book in order to follow the model of someone like that, who thinks deeply and lives close to the earth and to the land and to God. I mean, what better life is there to live? So carry on.

So James Zeller writes, “I see my friends who are active on social media being engaged in the public sphere, having an influence and political and ethical issues in society. Do all Christians have a calling to be engaged in the public sphere, or might some have a calling to retreat public sphere to engage as fully as possible in the private sphere?” This is sort of a segue what you were just talking about. He goes on, “Does the concept of vocation help the Christian find the right balance between a relationship between their roles and both public and private spheres?”

Hmm. I love that question. And it does follow nicely from the last one. And I actually think that much of what we do, and especially this example, and I’ll get to that. But even more broadly, much of what we can do, we should ask ourselves, are we called to do this? Now and again, if we’re not called to do it, that doesn’t mean we can’t do it. But it changes, perhaps the way we do. So like, I’m not called to be a marathon runner for sure yet. I do enjoy my little slow runs so I can run, and also know that I’m not called to be a marathon runner. That’s one way of answering the question when it comes to things that are more intense and fraught and more demanding of us. And the social media is demanding of us in the sense that it does affect us and shape us and our emotions. We all know that the research is out there. And so I actually think everyone who is on social media should ask if they are called to be there and if they are there, why they are there. I mean, you know, my aunt in Alabama who’s on there to share family photos and memes. Wonderful. That’s what she does there. But others, as the commenter says, are out there trying to be in the public sphere and trying to influence and many of them probably shouldn’t be there. But some of us should be. I think we can think of social media as kind of like a mission field. And some people are called to it. I actually do feel called to it. I wish that I weren’t, to be honest with you. I wish that I weren’t, but it is part of my calling for many reasons. And maybe that will change someday. Maybe someday, social media will disappear. Who knows? And so it’s something we should approach intentionally, no matter how we’re using it. And there certainly are people out there who, um, probably are not called to it. And are there anyway. And the public sphere is, you know, there are many elements to the public sphere. Social media is one, and it does have a certain amount of weight and influence, and it does have an effect on the world. But there are certainly many other ways to be involved in the public sphere that are probably more influential, at least in longer lasting ways. And so that would be something to consider as well as we’re trying to figure out. First is our calling in this public sphere and which public sphere might it be? We just really need to be intentional and ask the question. And we’re not doing that enough.

Yeah. To combine two questions that are on a similar issue, which is the role of other people in discerning calling. So to ask, “Can you offer a thought on the wise counsel that includes a supportive prayer group and can provide diverse perspectives, especially if we adapt our sense of calling?” On the same theme Linda Pastoral asks, “How do we ask for confirmations of our end up being cheaters but actually serious and truthful input?”

Molly Frost asked if you could offer thoughts on the value of seeking wise counsel. That includes a supportive prayer group and can provide diverse perspectives.

Yeah. And so we absolutely should seek wise and diverse counsel. And one of the traps we should not fall into is to go to the people that we know are going to give the answer that we want. That can be something that’s easy to do. So we should we should seek wise counsel from people who know us well, especially. But then also, perhaps, you know, people who have a more objective outside perspective because they don’t know us as well. That’s an important part. But I think the affirmation to as we go forward And as we try things and we see, oh, am I doing this well? Am I good at this? Is it? Is it filling a need? Simply going forward and, you know, sort of testing the waters can be helpful as well. But we certainly need to ask people we know will give us honest feedback. That doesn’t mean they are the word of God. But it can be helpful. But I think also just the the doing is helpful as well.

Well, Karen, thank you so much. This has just been a real delight. And in a moment or two, I want to give you the last word, but before a few things, just to share with all of you who are watching. First, and really, after we conclude we’ll be sending an online feedback form. We would love for you to fill this out. We always look at all of these. We integrate you and your comments and as a small token of our appreciation for those who do fill it out, we’ll give you a call for a free download of a Trinity Forum reading of your choice. And there’s actually a bunch that we just that kind of go hand in glove with our conversation, including authors that Karen has quoted quite liberally. And you have a calling. Some of those include Dorothy Sayers’s essay “Why Work?,” Emily Dickinson’s “Bulletins from Immortality” Trinity Forum Reading, which includes her spiritual poetry, Viktor Frankl and “Man’s Search for Meaning,” and “God’s Grandeur” by Gerard Manley Hopkins. And that would also commend some of the Trinity Forum readings which Karen has written the introduction including our Pride and Prejudice Reading, “The Pardoner’s Tale,” and A Christmas Carol. In addition, tomorrow we will be sending out an email with a link to a lightly edited video. We’ll probably take out some video glitches that we’ve had today and send it around just to be on the lookout for that. And with that video, we’ll also have a list of other readings and resources to help you. If you are interested, go more deeply to the topic that we’ve discussed today. In addition, I’d like to invite all of you who are watching to join the Trinity Forum Society, which is the community of people who help advance Trinity Form’s mission of keeping the Christian intellectual tradition alive and nurturing new growth. There are many benefits of being part of this community in addition to the missional aspect of it, including a subscription, Readings, a subscription to our daily What We’re Reading list of curating recommendations. And as a special incentive, we join the Trinity Forum Society. Or with your gift of $150 or more, we will send you a signed copy of Karen’s forthcoming book, not available until Tuesday on Amazon or elsewhere, but available with a signed copy for all members of the free form. Societies will avail yourself of that opportunity. In addition, a few things that are coming up. Our next online conversation will be on August 29th. My colleague Tom Walsh will be talking with theologian and former bishop Graham Tomlin, and on September 5th will be welcoming Senior Fellow Will Inboden to the Online Conversation series. We’re also in the midst of our summer podcast series called Beside Still Waters, which focus on the places where creativity can bring new life into a neat and broken world. So from jazz to Jane Austen to literature and beyond, we encourage you to like to avail yourself of our podcast series on the arts, faith, and creativity. As we wrap up, I also want to thank both Karen but also the Trinity Forum team: Tom Walsh, Campbell Vogel, Marie-Anne Morris, Macrae Hanke, and Frances Owen, who every day put the mission of the Trinity Forum into action. I so appreciate each of my teammates. And Karen, it has just been a real delight, as ever, to have you on and talk with you.

Well, we’ve certainly talked about a lot of hard questions today that have complicated and not easy answers. So if I can just sort of simplify it all and just say that when we pursue truth, we are truly free. When we pursue the good, we find joy. And when we pursue the beautiful, we live in the light. So if we just pursue all those three, we will pursue our callings and find them. Thank you.