Is Your Life Calling?

Rev. Mark Stringer

First Unitarian Church of Des Moines

9/1/02

Chalice Lighting  (The words of Thich Naht Hahn)

“Waking up this morning, I smile.  Twenty-four brand new hours are before me.  I vow to live fully in each moment and to look at all beings with eyes of compassion.”

Meditation for 9/1/02

Creative Spirit, Spirit of Life

Known by many names spoken and unspoken…

This Sunday before Labor Day

Let us remember the labor all around us.

We remember those who have had the good fortune of finding a job where their “deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.”[1]

And we remember those whose job is a compromise, who have never had the benefit or privilege of choosing a career.

We remember those who work the dangerous jobs that help to ensure our safety—firefighters, police officers, those in the military…

We remember those in the helping professions—

Doctors, lawyers, nurses, teachers, social workers

Who give of themselves so that others may do the same.

We remember those in government,
our President and other elected officials who have been
entrusted to represent our interests in difficult times.

We remember those who have left their home countries for their own tiny portion of American wealth, the money that can mean so much when sent to struggling family members back home.

We remember those working in inhumane conditions that we are privileged enough not to tolerate: migrant workers doing the back-braking work of the harvest, and sweatshop workers around the globe producing the shoes, shirts, and toys that fill our stores.

We remember those struggling to make ends meet--
those who spend their working lives in low-paying jobs
that do not adequately provide for one person, let alone a family.

We remember those who feel the ache of discrimination and abuse on the job, and we remember those who deal out that discrimination and abuse.  May their own deep wounds be salved so that they may stop inflicting their pain on others.

Our thoughts are with those without work this day, or unable to work due to illness or infirmity.  May their lives be buoyed by the promise of better days to come.

And let us not forget those busy at work this morning

Unable to meet for worship, fellowship, and song.

Let us be silent for a time…

Spirit of Life,

Let us find resiliency as we meet the challenges of our workweek and the challenges of our lives.  May we each discover the means to find work that is real, life-giving, and meaning-filled.  And when our work is done, may we rest in the assurance that we did the best we could with what we were given.

Amen.

Reading

“Ask Me” by William Stafford

Some time when the river is ice ask me

Mistakes I have made.  Ask me whether

What I have done is my life.  Others

Have come in their slow way into

My thought, and some have tried to help

Or to hurt: ask me what difference

Their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.

You and I can turn and look

At the silent river and wait.  We know

The current is there, hidden; and there

Are comings and goings from miles away

That hold the stillness exactly before us.

What the river says, that is what I say.[2]

Special Music “Mr. Tanner” by Harry Chapin

Mister Tanner was a cleaner from a town in the Midwest.
And of all the cleaning shops around he'd made his the best.
But he also was a baritone who sang while hanging clothes.
He practiced scales while pressing tails and sang at local shows.
His friends and neighbors praised the voice that poured out from his throat.
They said that he should use his gift instead of cleaning coats.

(Chorus)But music was his life, it was not his livelihood,
and it made him feel so happy and it made him feel so good.
And he sang from his heart and he sang from his soul.
He did not know how well he sang; It just made him whole.

His friends kept working on him to try music out full time.
A big debut and rave reviews, a great career to climb.
Finally they got to him, he would take the fling.
A concert agent in New York agreed to have him sing.
And there were plane tickets, phone calls, money spent to rent the hall.
It took most of his savings but he gladly used them all.

(Chorus)

The evening came, he took the stage, his face set in a smile.
And in the half filled hall the critics sat watching on the aisle.
But the concert was a blur to him, spatters of applause.
He did not know how well he sang, he only heard the flaws.
But the critics were concise, it only took four lines.
But no one could accuse them of being over kind.

(spoken) Mr. Martin Tanner, Baritone, of Dayton, Ohio made his
Town Hall debut last night. He came well prepared, but unfortunately
his presentation was not up to contemporary professional standards.
His voice lacks the range of tonal color necessary to make it
consistently interesting.
(sung) Full time consideration of another endeavor might be in order.

He came home to Dayton and was questioned by his friends.
Then he smiled and just said nothing and he never sang again,
excepting very late at night when the shop was dark and closed.
He sang softly to himself as he sorted through the clothes.
(Chorus)

Sermon

I begin this morning, this Sunday before Labor Day, with a folk tale: 

There was a man who died and found himself in a beautiful place, surrounded by every conceivable comfort.  A man in a white-jacket came to him and said, “Welcome.  So glad you are here.  Please help yourself to anything you choose—food—pleasure—any kind of entertainment you desire.”        The man was delighted, and for days he sampled the various delicacies and experiences of which he had dreamed on earth.  But eventually he grew bored with all of it, and called the attendant to him. “I’m tired of all this,” he said.  “I need something to do. What kind of work can you give me?”

        The attendant sadly shook his head and replied, ‘I’m sorry, sir.  That’s one thing we can’t do for you.  There is no work here for you.’

        “Well, that’s a fine thing.  I might as well be in hell.”

        A smile sneaked across the attendant’s face as he said, “Where do you think you are?’”[3]

Though many of us might like to give a life without work a try, particularly in this day and age when so many of us feel overworked, I trust that we too would eventually desire to have something to do before long…ideally something meaningful…or at least, something with a decent salary with good health insurance and a retirement plan, thank you.

For most people of my generation and no doubt those who will follow, a job is not something that we expect to hold for many years.  Many of us watched our parents spend much of their working lives with one company only to be let go or forced into early retirement.  Maybe those of us who have grown up with MTV and video games and now the internet, see occupation as something more fluid and ever-changing, like computer animation or the rapid-fire images of a music video.  And yet, I suspect, there is within many of us, regardless of our age, a longing for a vocation that lines up with who we are deep inside.   Meaningful, fulfilling work in which, as theologian Frederick Buechner put it, our “deep gladness meets with world’s deep need.”[4] 

I speak with people all the time who tell me that they are not certain that they are in the profession they were meant for…that they fear there is a greater calling that they might have missed or that, if only they had known the limits they would face in their lives, they would have chosen a different path altogether… one that had nothing to do with their gifts or even their desires…a path that might have offered them a more secure existence in the face of life’s challenges.

It has been easy for me to nod in empathy with their plight.  Who among us has not questioned if the path we have chosen (or were forced to accept) has been the right one?  What makes something the “right” path anyway?  Could it be that there is more than one “right” path?  Or when viewed from a Zen Buddhist perspective, the whole notion of a “right path” is simply an unnecessary attachment that will only lead to frustration: perhaps any path is the “right” one if only viewed from the proper perspective.

The “right” path is often referred to as a “calling.”  Ministers, in particular, are big on using this terminology to explain what brought them into the ministry. When I realized that I might want to pursue a life in the UU ministry, I don’t know if I felt called, or just intrigued. Either way, I do remember that I was scared.  I examined my life closely and looked back at the journey that had taken me to that point.  I set up interviews with UU ministers, seminarians, and school officials to make sure I knew what I was getting myself into.  I remember sitting in the office of my minister at the time, Bruce Southworth, when he asked me, “Can you think of anything else you might want to do?  If so, you should not pursue a life in the ministry.”  Now in some ways, his question was unfair.  Of course I could think of other things to do.  And I still can.  I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want a minister who thinks that this is the only line of work for which he is suited.  And yet, I think I knew what Bruce meant.  After considering all of my experience in other jobs, and all of the options still before me, ministry did seem like the best fit.  At least it was my best guess.  And, it still is.  Isn’t that the most any of us can hope for?  A best guess.  Maybe that’s really what a calling is after all.

I once heard a now successful musician tell the story of a time when he was struggling with what was a very big career decision:  Should he answer a call to a life in the music business?  A friend invited him to a Quaker meeting, where, as many of you know, those present sit in silence until they are moved to speak.  After several minutes of silence, a phone in the next room began to ring. 

“Ring…ring…ring…ring…”

No one moved. 

“ring…ring…ring…” 

He began to wonder if the ringing would ever cease and he knew he was probably not alone. 

“Ring…ring…ring…” 

Suddenly he found words creeping from his heart to his lips and he offered into the silence--still being pierced by the ringing phone—this question: “How can you tell the difference between a ‘calling’ and a ‘distraction’?”

 “ring…ring…ring…”

A wise-looking older gentleman with a long white beard finally spoke: “The calling persists,” he said. 

And with that the phone stopped ringing. 

So maybe a calling is a persistent best guess. 

While some believe that a calling is a product of fate or some kind of divine inspiration, evidence has indicated to me that callings and career decisions are oftentimes much more coincidental than pre-ordained, emerging from a cauldron brew of aptitude, happenstance, and luck (good or bad, depending on how you look at it).

Here’s some evidence from the life I know best, my own.

When I was in kindergarten, I was the huskiest kid in my class.  When the Christmas pageant was cast that year, it was probably a no-brainer, then, that I was selected to play Santa Claus--the only character in the show, incidentally, that was to sing a solo.  Perhaps there was more that went into the decision that I should play Santa and expose my tremulous little boy voice to the students and PTA of Voris Elementary school, but my memory insists that I was cast because I was the biggest kid in the class.  Nonetheless, somewhere in my father’s house in Akron, Ohio there is documentation of the performance: a yellowing photograph of five-year old Mark, wearing a homemade Santa get-up including a big black belt borrowed from the first grade teacher and a beard made of cotton, singing “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.” If you could look closely at that photo, you would see that my eyes were bigger than quarters and my face was just about as red as my Santa suit.  I didn’t seem to be relishing the spotlight.  But in the end, I got so much positive reinforcement, I began to assume that I was supposed to do things like talk and sing in front of large groups of people.

Was there something inherent in me, other than my then husky figure, which put me on stage before my sixth birthday?  Or was my future forever influenced by the recognition I received and confidence I earned for surviving that experience?  After all, I did end up with two theatre degrees and several professional acting credits, and let’s face it, I’m still performing on a certain level.  I’ve thought a lot about that over the years, especially when I realized that I didn’t want to be an actor anymore. 

I chose to end my acting career around the time some would say I had started to really “succeed.” I had just been cast in my first lead in Chicago.  During that show, a poorly-staged production of Gershwin’s Strike Up the Band, I found myself disconnected from it all.  I was struggling to remember lines, I had difficulty maintaining my focus on stage, and I would leave the theatre on performance nights feeling empty.  Around this time, I had also secured the services of an agent.  I’m not talking a big-time agent, just someone who would send me out on occasional commercial calls.  I had one audition for a bit part in the now-defunct TV series The Untouchables.  In the waiting room, sat six guys who looked exactly like me.  I went into the audition, read my one line a few times and left.  I didn’t get the part.   I had another audition for a local furniture store.  I remember sitting at one end of a long table in a Chicago office tower while my auditioner coached me on how to say the word “Friday.”  “Frrrridaaaay!” he said.  “Say ‘Frrridaaaay!’”

I didn’t get the part…and, I realized, I didn’t want it.  Nor did I want a future of more auditions. The truth became crystal clear:  I didn’t want to be an actor after all.

I remember coming home that day and telling Susan that I was going to quit.  She didn’t seem all that surprised, but she did wonder how I could do it so quickly.  But I think we both knew that the decision had been brewing for some time.  When I packed my headshots away, I felt a weight being lifted off of me…a weight heavy with expectations for all the things I needed to do to pursue a career I finally realized I didn’t want.

When I look back at my own life, I wonder how it could have been that I wanted to be an actor at all. Perhaps some of you look back at your past pursuits (and maybe your current career) with a similar level of confusion. So what is it that leads us down these career paths we have traveled?  And how can we make sense of the turns we have taken in our lives which, in retrospect, seem foolish or misguided?  And perhaps most importantly, how might we discover our true vocation, wherever we may find ourselves in the stories of our lives?

In his book Let Your Life Speak, Parker Palmer addresses these questions.  He contends that vocation is not something that we should impose upon ourselves, like a list of standards by which we must live. Rather vocation is what emerges when we take the time to listen, when we begin to follow the truths and values that we cannot dismiss if we are to truly live our own lives.  Vocation, then, is not a goal to be pursued, but a calling we must hear. He writes, “Vocation does not come from willfulness.  It comes from listening.  I must listen to my life and try to understand what it is truly about—quite apart from what I would like it to be about—or my life will never represent anything real in the world, no matter how earnest my intentions.” [5]

Palmer tells the story of when, after earning a PhD and working as a successful teacher and community activist, he realized that he was feeling empty, as though he was living an outer life that was not in line with his inner life.  He too spent some time in a Quaker community where he was told to “Have faith and way will open.”  Way will open.  These words, he says, were not comforting to him.  Those of you who also have found yourselves in a vocational quandary no doubt understand why this advice was mostly discouraging.  When you feel like all you’ve done is travel down the wrong vocational roads, to hear that “way will open” does little to lighten the burden.  Palmer brought his frustration to a trusted friend, an older woman known for her candor, confessing to her that he had been faithfully listening for his calling, but “way” was not opening. He told her, “I’ve been trying to find my vocation for a long time, and I still don’t have the foggiest idea of what I’m meant to do.  Way may open for other people, but it’s sure not opening for me.”  His friend offered a simple reply.  “In sixty-plus years of living,” she said, “way has never opened in front of me.”  Then after a heavy pause, she continued, “But a lot of way has closed behind me, and that’s had the same guiding effect.”[6] 

This woman’s simple reply encouraged Palmer to recognize not only potential as an important part of discerning a calling, but limits as well.  Let’s face it, for a variety of reasons, most of them out of our control, none of us is suited for every line of work, no matter how much we might want to be or think that we are.  Each of us has limits just as viable as our potentials, and these limits are an essential guide as we discern our calling.  If our lives are, as Ghandi said, “experiments with truth,” then the negative results of our experiments are just as important as the positive ones.[7]

Clearly my foray into the world of professional acting was an “experiment with truth” that I could view as a failure.  But was this door closing really a failure, or was it an opportunity that enabled me to travel down another path?

I was in college when I first heard the song “Mr. Tanner” on a Harry Chapin recording, and I confess, I only heard the story of how he had failed…how his voice wasn’t good enough to cut it in the big time. I didn’t hear the part about how his friends and neighbors had encouraged him to do something he never really wanted to do.  I didn’t hear how, even after he returned home, music was still his life…and I didn’t hear the triumph embedded in the fact that he still sang…even if no one would hear him.  

I appreciate this Chapin song much more now because I have witnessed limitations in my own life and in the lives of the people I know, and I have come to believe that our lives are not to be evaluated according to our jobs alone.  Nor are they to be evaluated by cultural expectations.  Especially today, when fame is the primary marker of success, when the value of our lives is so often measured not by what we do, but by how many people see us doing it.  Chapin knew that there was a difference between one’s livelihood and one’s life…a difference between one’s job and one’s vocation. In the face of what many probably saw as failure, after encountering what could have been a crushing limitation, his character Mr. Tanner keeps singing anyway…even if it is just softly to himself…and here’s the important part…he sings because it makes him whole.

This morning’s reading, the poem “Ask Me” by William Stafford covers similar territory.

Stafford wrote:

“Some time when the river is ice ask me

Mistakes I have made.  Ask me whether

What I have done is my life.  Others

Have come in their slow way into

My thought, and some have tried to help

Or to hurt: ask me what difference

Their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.

You and I can turn and look

At the silent river and wait.  We know

The current is there, hidden; and there

Are comings and goings from miles away

That hold the stillness exactly before us.

What the river says, that is what I say.”

Stafford wrote, “Ask me whether what I have done is my life.”

The different paths we have traveled—all of the wrong turns, disappointing detours, and glorious gateways put together—are not our lives. 

Our lives are so much more than that. 

And often times the lives we are living are separate from the lives that want to live in us. 

But when we take the time to truly listen to our lives, to discover the hidden currents beneath the surface of our living, the currents always impacted by “comings and goings from miles away,” we begin to hear the real truth:  Our lives will tell us where to go.  We only have to listen. 

We only have to listen. 

The good news is that each day we have twenty-four more hours to do so.  As poet Stanley Kunitz wrote: “I can scarcely wait till tomorrow, when a new life begins for me, as it does each day, as it does each day.”[8]  

Closing Words (Richard Gilbert)

“There is something to be said for letting go,

For risking the uncertain,

For putting oneself in strong life currents

With a rich mixture of faith and fear.

Unknown pools sustain us, buoy us;

Forgotten instincts stretch our spirits to the surface

Where the air is clear and the water cold and refreshing.”