|
|
I could conceivably blame Keith Graber Miller for the fact that I am only now, on the eve of forty, figuring out my vocation. In 1995, having introduced me to the man who later became my husband, Keith conveniently failed to mention the thirteen-year age difference between us. Not far into our dating life, we discovered Keith’s abbreviation of the truth and realized that, if we wanted to get married and have children, we ought to do so sooner rather than later. Otherwise, my husband liked to joke, he might be in Depends before the babies were out of diapers. So it was that, two years into marriage and long before I had any idea what I wanted to be when I grew up, I found myself with a newborn, and then another, and then another. For a few years, my professional life meant writing a book review here and doing an editing job there, all the while grousing to friends that I had no vocation at all. Then, suddenly, our youngest was in kindergarten, and I had six hours a day to write and edit, and the epiphany broke over me one afternoon: this is exactly the work I want to be doing. To blame Keith Graber Miller for my heretofore harum-scarum vocational life, however, I would have to use exactly the kind of narrow definition of “vocation” that he so eloquently undercuts in Living Faith. Vocation does not equate with paid work, Graber Miller tells us, and Christians who conflate the two risk missing the deeper pulsing of vocation that animates all of life. Graber Miller’s capacious definition of vocation—as discipleship to Christ rather than career path—is good news for those of us whose working lives resemble a patched pair of overalls, held together less by sleek threads of professional advancement than fraying pieces of circumstance, caregiving, and part-time gigs. Graber Miller’s expansive notion of vocation is also good news for the woman who gave me change at the gas station and for my neighbor who is out of work. When vocation equals discipleship, it is available to all. When, on the other hand, vocation means profession, which requires education, which necessitates resources, it becomes owned by a relatively small elite. We do not need, Graber Miller writes, a “theology that simply and uncritically blesses the socio-economic trajectories of the majority of North American Mennonites.” He commends to us discussions of vocation in the 1970s regarding the “perils of professionalism,” as well as several streams of thought about vocational calling from biblical times and Anabaptist history. Now that I am more clearly slotted into a profession, I am also glad for Graber Miller’s warnings about the claims that our jobs make on us, the ways that we can be formed and de-formed by our work. We should have a “partial loyalty” to our jobs, Graber Miller writes, “a willingness to think critically about the demands of those roles.” The capacity to follow one’s passion into a particular field is a great blessing, and one the author celebrates. But Living Faith reminds us that the primary agenda of an Anabaptist vocation, whether or not it is lodged in one’s remunerated work, is “to work at bringing healing and reconciliation in God’s good and groaning world.” Ultimately,
I have more to thank Keith Graber Miller for than introducing me to my
husband. Now I can thank him for this book about vocation that I will
give to my sons in a few years, when they are perhaps as confused as I
once was about what to be when they grow up. I plan to re-read it with
them. |
|||||
