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Today is episode 160: Your Vocation

Hi friends. As you may know, I am a preschool music teacher who works in a variety of schools, enrichment centers and more during the course of each week. Well, this week as I walked up the path to enter one of my schools, I heard the most guttural screaming cry coming from one of the preschoolers. As I was buzzed through the door, I saw a staff member helping this little boy transition into his school day and get him down the hall to his classroom. Now, this little guy was really having the hardest time, and the staff member was patient, kind, firm and helpful. She showed real skill in helping him change his focus and helping him to move forward under really challenging circumstances. And the whole time, I walked behind them in the hallway, listening to her work her magic, and by the time he got to his classroom, this once melting-down kiddo was ready for the day. 

Now, if you are not a teacher or someone who works in a school, then you may not know the truly heroic job that teachers and school staff are doing these days to meet the many needs of their students. I would hazard to guess that if you spent just one full day working in a classroom, you would probably bring a teacher a coffee every day for the rest of the year, but if you know, you already know. Well, because I am in and out of so many settings during the course of the week, I am privileged to see some really exceptional work from some really exceptional professionals – actions and interactions with humans that are so capable and kind, so helpful and professional, these things that come as a result of talent, strength, care, experience and preparation, that you can’t really call it ‘just’ a job. What I am witnessing here is vocation.

Today I’d like to talk about the difference between a job and a vocation, about how those two things can overlap but don’t necessarily have to, about how a vocation can change over the course of your life, about how you can have more than one vocation at a time, where a vocation comes from, and I would love to break the idea that some of us cradle Catholics have that a vocation is something reserved only for clergy who are somehow ‘better’ than the rest of us. Of course, that idea is demonstrably untrue, so… let’s get into it.

If you were born and raised Catholic, you may have been taught to think that a vocation was a lifetime calling from God and that a person could be called to either religious life or to marriage. Now, that is such a narrow understanding of vocation on its face, not to mention it leaves out a huge range of single adults, but when you add clericalism into the mix, you get a twisted belief that the call to religious life is a ‘higher’ calling than well, everything else. And of course, there is nothing in the Catechism to support that statement.

But what is a vocation and how do you get one and how does a person even know what their vocation is? The word vocation comes from the Latin word ‘vocare’, which means voice. When we are living our vocation, we are listening to the voice of God, and we are doing what we are led to do to meet some need in our human family. A person could be living out a vocation at a job for which they are paid, or they might do the work of their vocation as a volunteer or in some other way. Frequently, a vocation will come as a result of a person’s life experience, their strengths, interests, and talents. A vocation will present itself as a door of opportunity at a particular time and place. A call toward a certain work will feel like a pull, will make your spirit sit up and take notice, may feel as author Max Lucado describes as hitting a ball in the sweet spot of a bat. In that way, working within our vocation just kind of feels right, it makes sense to our souls. And you may not even call something a vocation as you’re doing it, but you may know a vocation by its fruit. As author Frederick Buechner says, “The place God calls you is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” Ah, I love that.

My Mom worked within her vocation when she started and ran her parish food pantry later in her life. As someone who dealt with food insecurity as a child, she felt called to create a place which would provide not only food but dignity to those they served. Instead of calling it a ‘food pantry’, she called it a ‘free market’ and instead of pre-bagging the groceries for them, she allowed her clients to shop from the shelves. St. Anthony’s Free Market was a place where people felt seen and known, my mother made quite sure of that. I remember that my Mom said that every single job and experience she had ever had in her life up until that point had contributed skills and led her to that work that was just simply in her to do. As we recognize our own vocations, we might feel that same drive and push, that feeling of puzzle pieces coming together, that confluence of experience and opportunity, an open door that we cannot help but walk through.

A vocation is something that can shift with time, and we can work within more than one vocation for sure, but as I get older, I see how the various work that God has given me to do is not separate at all but could be considered ‘one’ calling within a trajectory over the course of my life. I’m a preschool music teacher, I do music ministry, I write about and make podcasts on faith. All of these are things that I have felt ‘led’ by God to do and I have seen Him open doors for me to do each one of them over time. When I work in each one of these ways, not all the time, but often I will feel that sort of ‘hit a ball in the sweet spot of a bat’ feeling, kind of like God is doing these things in and through me, like I am not the one doing the work at all but rather I am participating with God in it. And, no, I don’t consider the ‘faith-oriented’ work, whether I’m singing at church or writing on faith as a ‘higher’ calling than my teaching work because in each circumstance I am allowing God to work through me to connect with and to be a light for another human. Working within a capital-M Ministry does not necessarily mean that someone is working within a God-given calling. We’ve all seen people in those roles who may not be shining the light of God while they work, whose motives maybe are somewhat questionable, who might appear to be serving themselves and not their sisters and brothers. This a trap so many ministers fall into, and it is something that I’m always on the lookout for myself. But when we are working well within our vocation, we will know instinctually that it is not about us, but we will find ourselves grateful for the part we get to play in participating in something good and holy and much bigger than ourselves.

It might be that you are already working within a calling that God has given you, but you’ve just never thought to use that language around it. I’ve known so many people like that, just for sure doing the thing that they were made to do, shining their light, and making the world better one day at a time. And here I think of my friend Beth, my sister Shauna, my late friend Julie. One works with a nonprofit, one as a BCBA in a school district, and one owned a dance studio. Regardless of the work, it is their presence that communicates their calling, and their work is simply the tool or the material they use to bring that light to the surface for others. 

And so, I’m wondering, friend, have you identified a vocation of your own, either past or present? As you look at your own life, do you see the confluence of where your unique deep gladness and the world’s hunger meet? What’s one step you could take today to further your ‘yes’ in that direction? Because God has made us intentionally with our work in mind, when we do step forward, we may just find that the path opens up for us in the most beautiful ways, opening new doors and affecting not only those we connect with and serve, but us, in our most soulful places, the deep places that make us feel most alive. Weaving our stories together with others and with the work of our hands makes us into the most joyful, peaceful, purposeful versions of ourselves as we grow in abundance and community. In our vocations as in all things, God takes our ‘yes’ and He multiplies it for the good in ways that we can’t even imagine. And I always want to see what God will show me on the other side of my ‘yes’, and I’m wondering, friend, how about you? 

Thanks so much for being with me today, friend. If you need me, you can find me on Instagram @kerrycampbellwrites, at Substack at kerrycampbellwrites.substack.com, or on my website at kerrycampbell.org. Thanks so much for rating, reviewing, subscribing and most importantly, sharing this podcast with a friend.  That makes a real difference in growing our community, so thanks. If you would like to support this podcast financially, there are a couple of ways for you to do that in the show notes, along with some resources related to today’s episode, so do check all of that out, but before we go, let’s pray together.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

God, we know we are fearfully and wonderfully and intentionally made. Would you show us the work of our hands and open good doors for us to walk through to keep saying ‘yes’ to the abundant life you offer? For us and our dear ones we pray in the name of Jesus and wrapped in the mantle of our Mother Mary, amen.

Thanks so much for being with me today, friend. I’ll see you next time.

Show Notes

This week we explore the idea of vocation and how we can identify and step into our God-given vocations that are as uniquely created as we are. 

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Thanks as always to my friend, Peter Vaughan-Vail, for providing the beautiful harp music you hear in this and every episode.

Here are some resources I hope will help you to engage with this week’s topic in a deeper way for yourself:

1. Song: ⁠Make Your Own Kind of Music⁠, by Cass Elliot

2. Article: ⁠Job, Career, Vocation – The Difference is in the Calling⁠, by Becky Horst for Goshen College

3. Song: ⁠Who Am I⁠, by Casting Crowns

4. Book: ⁠Let Your Life Speak – Listening for the Voice of Vocation⁠, by Parker Palmer

5. Book: ⁠Listening to Your Life – Daily Meditations⁠, by Frederick Buechner

6. Instagram Live – ⁠artist Scott Erickson speaks on struggling through discovering his vocation, asking the question, “What do you love?”⁠