The question of vocation often seems to arrive too late, and when it does, too narrowly conceived. It gets attached to questions of employment possibilities, sometimes only to an elite set of career choices deemed worthy of the title. Occasionally it is narrowed even further to forms of recognised ministry in the church. The question also assumes a curious form of the sort: ‘What are you going to do with your life?’ This is odd because it seems to separate out doing and living, the person and the action as if these were different kinds of entity.
Perhaps the place to begin is, as they say, at the very beginning. In the first account of creation offered in Genesis, God creates by speaking. In other words God calls the world and its various elements to be. Here, existence and vocation come together. Vocation then is not a question anyone can avoid. It is sometimes instructive to hold conversations on vocation outdoors where one can observe the rest of nature unfussedly fulfilling its vocation. The birds and the bees can be invoked for a different lesson; they do not appear to agonise about how their being and doing coincide. The great identifying difference, of course, between humanity and the rest of the natural world is, partially at least, related to our degree of freedom. But, despite the urgings of contemporary culture, freedom is not necessarily instantiated in freedom of choice, because one always has to ask why a certain choice has been made (and advertisers make a good living by assuming not all is a matter of freedom). If God exhibits the highest degree of freedom then, theologically, freedom has something to do with an inhabited coincidence between essence (who one is) and existence (what one concretely does). In thinking about our vocation then, human beings cannot escape the question of who we are, or better, what our authentic becoming might mean.
There is a helpful passage in Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance ([1974] 1981, pp.21-4) which I find instructive, perhaps because I, like the author Robert Pirsig, have spent a good deal of time working on engines (though mine tend to be in cars). Anyone who has had dealings with a garage will recognise at least the shape of this narrative.
While the author is riding his motorcycle along at 70mph, shortly after taking delivery of it, the engine suddenly seizes causing the rear wheel to skid. He and his passenger are thrown precariously forward until at 30mph it suddenly frees itself. ‘What did you do that for?’ his uncomprehending passenger asks. Rather than getting into the complicated business of repairing it himself, Pirsig decides it is best to take it to a garage; after all they should know what they’re doing. He describes what he saw on entry:
“The shop was a different scene from the ones I remember. The mechanics who had once all seemed like ancient veterans, now looked like children. A radio was going full blast and they were clowning around and talking and seemed not to notice me.”
After a cursory glance and a diagnosis of “tappets” the garage effects a repair. On collection, and after careful running in, the author takes the bike back up to 70mph; the same thing happens again and he returns it back to the garage. The mechanics repair it again, test it, and now the engine seizes up on them. They then repair it for the third time, giving it back to the customer with the ominous instruction: “Don’t run it fast.” Now, not only is the motorcycle covered in grease and with newly damaged cooling fins, but there really is a tappet noise coming from the engine. Why, Pirsig asks himself, did they make such a mess of it?
“…the biggest clue seemed to be their expressions. They were hard to explain. Good-natured, friendly, easygoing – and uninvolved. They were like spectators. You had the feeling that they had just wandered in there themselves and somebody had handed them a wrench. There was no identification with the job. No saying, “I am a mechanic.””
We might say that they had no vocation to be mechanics. In the end Pirsig has to do the job himself, and finds the cause of the problem. A previous mechanic (of course) had sheared a 25 cent pin that ending up partially blocking the oil delivery system. This prevented the engine from being properly lubricated at high speed causing it to get extremely hot and seize up.
Being a mechanic is more than knowledge and experience, more than employment as a mechanic. One also needs the patience that comes from genuinely caring about the work. And to care one has to identity with the task, to be able to say meaningfully: ‘I am a mechanic.’
Especially in times of recession and economic challenge, but at other times too, one may not, of course, have the luxury of finding employment that perfectly matches and fulfils one’s identity. But one’s primary vocation is to be who God has made you to be, and having understood this, if possible, to find work that resonates with and expresses that identity. The task of discerning one’s vocation does not, though, begin at the point of asking questions of future employment; it runs so much more deeply.
At a time when universities are paying particular attention to ‘employability’ – not least because of the current auditing regime and its attendant league tables – chaplaincy has a vital role to play in recalling the institution’s attention to this more fundamental sense of vocation that results from the conviction that the world is created, not accidental. It does not lessen the importance of enabling our students to find suitable work, but it places the whole purpose of university education in a broader frame of reference, that it might be about ‘drawing out’ the person who participates.
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