Vocation

From Cutting For Stone, 2009*
by Abraham Verghese


"WE COME UNBIDDEN into this life, and if we are lucky we find a purpose beyond starvation, misery, and early death which, lest we forget, is the common lot."
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One of the best parts of my job is working with a group of eight Maryville College students known as the Isaac Anderson Fellows.  The IAs, as we lovingly call them, are tasked with thinking seriously about vocation.  Vocation is such an overfilled idea, and it is their job to unpack it.  Each of these students completes a summer internship to explore how their own vocation relates to their faith.  It has been so fun to watch them travel all over doing meaningful work.  


Noah went to China; Katie went to Scotland;  Alli went to Ghana;  Michae went to Peru; Amy went to Italy; Hannah went everywhere;  I went to work.  (Kidding aside, I was so envious of their adventures, but I was also grateful that I spent a few weeks in college exploring Ireland with my pal Marie and London with the always fun Amanda.)  Other students took less glamorous positions, but had very meaningful experiences.  Jordan went to Louisville, Sarah went to Birmingham, Jacob went to Chattanooga.  They all returned with stories - of how they glimpsed a bit of what they want to do, and learned gobs of what they wanted to avoid.**


I am sure that all of the IA students would say that these trips are their favorite part of the program.  Well I don't go on those trips.  So my favorite part is our reading discussion group.  Every month, the eight students, myself, and the fabulous Rev. Dr. Anne McKee, meet for lunch at a place called the House in the Woods.  (I know- it sounds like a children's fantasy book.  It's not.)  We sit together around a table, and in order.  The students created this musical chairs journey all on their own.  Each year, the class moves over two seats, allowing our new members a place at the table,  and forcing the previous Juniors to fill the chairs of the graduates who have just left.  One year, they even entered the room 2x2, just like the Noah's animals.  


Anyway, we've read great books.  Callings: Twenty Centuries of Christian Wisdom on Vocation.  Leading Lives That Matter: What We Should Do and Who We Should Be.  Awakened to A Calling.  And this year, On Our Way: Christian Practices for Living a Whole Life.  


Last month, we read a chapter from On Our Way.  This collection of essays edited by Dorothy Bass and Susan Briehl invites a different author to take on a Christian Practice.  We were discussing the chapter on "Making a Good Living."  As you can probably surmise from the title, the chapter highlighted the tension that exists between making enough money and doing what fulfills us.  In other words, which "good" matters more?  What was great was that Frank Schaeffer  was with us for our discussion.  He was so caring and interested in these eight students lives.  Frank was impressive.  But our students were more impressive (I know I am biased).  


One student spoke up as we were discussing the weight of vocational exploration, "It really is a privileged question."  And of course, he is correct.  How blessed are we that we get to choose a vocation.  What a serious responsibility we have to the discernment process.


Thanks to all of the IAs for teaching me so much - I am so blessed that it is my vocation to spend time with you all. 


*So if you haven't read this book, do. Seriously.


**This is just one of the many scholarship programs that Maryville College has to offer.  I know it looks expensive, but you seriously could attend Maryville, go to Spain, have smaller classes taught by doctors, and pay the same as your buddy at UT.  I promise.  Just call the admissions office.  

Tuscaloosa, Alabama

from The Help, 2009
by Katherine Stockett


"The colored part of town seems so far away when, evidently, it’s only a few miles from the white part of town."
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Tuscaloosa, Alabama is hot.  I experienced this first-hand when I ventured to the world of Bear Bryant to visit my great friends, Amanda and Andrew, who were both in graduate programs at the university.  So when it came time to select a destination for the Maryville College Alternative Spring Break trip (which I would be leading) I figured we could all use a little more heat - and I knew Tuscaloosa was the perfect spot.  Actually, we picked Tuscaloosa because we knew that the city would still be rebuilding from the April 2011 tornadoes, and we figured there would be plenty to do (for work and play).  It also just so happened that Amanda and Andrew had their baby girl a week before our trip.  (Total coincidence that I got to hang out with them and baby Adeline. *wink*)


The trip was a great success.  The students worked hard, had fun, and ate like kings and queens.  I got some quality baby time, and I was grateful that most of the organizing work was done by our partners in Tuscaloosa.  The Presbyterian Disaster Assistance lead us to First Presbyterian Church, Tuscaloosa, who connected us with Habitat for Humanity.  Bam.  The trip was planned in full with a few phone calls. 


On Thursday night, squeezed between our work day and a dinner at Dreamland BBQ, the good people at First Presbyterian Church drove us around the city to show us the path of the tornado and the destruction that was still evident 11 months later.  Our tour guide worked as a city planner, so he really was on ground zero right when the tornado hit.  The tour was long, the devastation vast, and stories tragic.  I asked our three tour guides if the city learned anything from Katrina - if the response to the disaster was different having witnessed that event.  One woman spoke up, "Yes," she said, "the Church responded very quickly because of what happened with Katrina.  There was food everywhere.  You literally couldn't walk down the street without being offered two or three meals."  She and the other two church members elaborated that one thing they learned was that communities can care for themselves better than outsiders can.  (This was spoken as a criticism of the fumbling government intervention and thus the Democratic party, so I got a bit defensive.  Still I understand their point.)


Next, our guide spoke this sentence, which made my heart drop: "this tornado couldn't have picked a more perfect path to take out all of the poor and immigrant communities in Tuscaloosa."  


Now, my thoughts on this conversation were converging into this idea:  "If you knew, with clear borders, where the poor and immigrant communities were, where people live and are under housed, under paid, and under fed, WHY DID YOU WAIT UNTIL A TORNADO CAME THROUGH TO DO SOMETHING??"  Ok.  I realized that my anger was totally displaced; Tuscaloosa was a good town with good people who were working to make things better.  They were welcoming groups, like ours, to re-build houses for those without insurance.  They were housing and feeding us every day that we were there.  My anger rested in the fact that still today, as in the 1960's when The Help was set, the lines in our towns are still very clearly drawn.


In the end, I realized that my community (and yours, too) could learning something from Tuscaloosa just as Tuscaloosa learned from New Orleans. We do not have to wait for a disaster to help each other.  We do not have to accept that there are lines between the poor and rich, immigrants and locals.  We do not have to wait for government assistance.  If each community took care of the people in its own community, we wouldn't need FEMA to send agents to help us organize.  Just send us a check to cover some of the costs of rebuilding - we've got it covered, thank you!


Feed people NOW.  House people NOW.  Love people NOW.  Not later, when the storm has come and gone, when lives are already lost, when hopelessness overwhelms our souls, but RIGHT NOW.
(Cue Van Halen)

The Beauty of Writing

"Be Still and know that I am God."  Psalm 46.10


"Peace, be still."  Mark 4:39


"....a still small voice."  1 Kings 19:12
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This piece of my mother's calligraphy hangs in my office.  These three scriptures, all dealing with stillness, confront me daily as I arrive at work.  I'll admit, I don't have much of a problem with being still; I can sleep forever, nap at any hour, and relax without the nagging feeling that I need to be doing something.


I'm not sure what sparked in me, but suddenly I have been filled with the urge to follow my mom's path and learn the art of calligraphy.  The desire hit me without warning and with a strength that I could not resist.  For two weeks, I spent vast quantities of time sitting at the kitchen table writing letters - with my mother's examples to guide me.  My birthday arrived at an opportune time for me to indulge my new addiction; I headed to Hobby Lobby to buy some real calligraphy pens (as opposed to the calligraphy markers I had been using up to this point).  I sent emails to any calligraphers I could find in town, inquiring about classes or lessons I might take - so far without response.  Needless to say, I became a bit obsessed with this new hobby. 


Quickly, I felt a bit of anxiety around the venture.  First, I'm not that good.  One problem is that I will always have my mother's work for comparison, and she is skilled beyond belief!  Second, I found that I could sit and write words with no regard for the time.  I am sure we all have passions in which we "lose time," and practicing calligraphy was becoming this for me.  I realized that if I wasn't careful, I could neglect my family, friends, and job for the thrill of the hunt fort the perfect line, with beautiful, consistent curves and equal spacing.  


Luckily, my mom is only a few hours away, and she is thrilled to be a mentor and teacher - we will probably head to a beginners class together soon.  (This makes me chuckle a bit - in NO way does she belong in a beginners class.) Maybe when I have been writing as long as she has, I will have the ability to create art the way she does.  I am also thrilled that this new passion has hit alongside baseball season. Strange, I know, but when Daniel is in bed and Mark sits down to watch the Oakland Athletics, I can sit at the kitchen table and practice my calligraphy.  It's perfect, really, because I can be with him and we can talk, both enjoying our own pastimes.  He comes over to see what I am writing, and I in turn follow the game.  When the game is over, I can pack away my things for another day, and spend time in other ways.


Our word calligraphy comes from the Greek: κάλλος kallos "beauty" + γραφή graphẽ "writing."  Ahh, I love when things come full circle.  This blog began as a way for me to indulge my longing to be creative, and I started in spite of the fear that I, myself, do not have much creative to say.  I reconciled my desires and my fears with "Original Plagiarism," so that I could respond to the ways that beautiful writing inspires me.  Of course, I was regarding "writing" as words in a book, lyrics in a song, scriptures, or quotes that move my emotions in some way.  


How fitting, then, that I have found calligraphy!  I am still exploring beautiful writing, but now I am looking at words themselves, and the letters that make them.  With studying this art form, like writing this blog, my emotions are moved and my creativity tapped.  Maybe soon I will be able to calligraphy well enough to earn some money, since I doubt my unoriginal "creative" writing will ever earn me a dime more than satisfaction.  


All of this leaves me thankful for my mom and her influences on my life, not to mention my husband who supports my new habit.  I am thankful for my stepson, who includes me in his creative and imaginative world.  And when my work is done, and the little one in bed, I am thankful for the time I have to breathe, "peace, be still," with a pen in my hand and a great man at my side.

Death Row

From A Saint on Death Row, 2009

Thomas Cahill

"There are no millionaires along Death Row, nor will there ever be."

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I first learned about this book at the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Institute for Children's Advocacy. The conference seeks to empower the church to speak for the children in our country and world who cannot speak for themselves. The line-up includes many rock stars of the advocacy and preaching world, and I absolutely love going. The Proctor institute is the closest thing I have found to the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, the Beloved Community, the Church; it is a glimpse of how we are to live as people of faith.

Here at the Proctor Institute, I have heard Fred Craddock's stories of faith and hope. I have heard Marian Wright Edelman's charge that "this country doesn't have a money problem, it has a values problem." I have heard Otis Moss Jr. share stories of being imprisoned alongside Martin Luther King Jr. I have heard his son, Otis Moss III preach a prophetic word challenging the church to act. I have heard Bart Campolo's call for hope in spite of hopelessness with his words, "There are some people you can't save; there are no people you can't love." I have heard former gang member Roy Martin speak truth to a room filled with privileged people: "Hurt people hurt people."

One of the many issues that these speakers at Proctor are working to correct is the "cradle to prison pipeline" which plagues males of color in our country. Many, many external factors (unstable homes, flawed justice system, lack of role models, prison industrial complex, lack of resources) lead to this crisis, but the statistics show that 1 in 3 black males and 1 in 6 Latino males are at risk of imprisonment in their lifetime. Many young boys do not know even one male who has avoided imprisonment.

This book, written by Thomas Cahill, who wrote How the Irish Saved Civilization, explores the conviction and execution of Dominique Green. The tragedy of the tale is inevitable, and I had heard many of the statics about the flawed system already through my time at the Proctor Institute. What hit me the most was this quote: "There are no millionaires along Death Row, nor will there ever be."

Wow.

To believe that our justice system is blind is to deceive ourselves. To believe that some lives are worthless is to deceive our humanity. To believe that capital punishment is acceptable is to deceive our faith in a Christ who is ever gracious.

Another final thought from Cahill: "The way our society treats its most vulnerable and unprotected citizens is a judgment on all of us who have the money to purchase and read a book—and therefore are likely to have the money to purchase adequate legal assistance. We all need to familiarize ourselves with the injustices that have been done—and continue to be done—in our name."