The Late Night
First day of school: no parking at all, I park, in desperation, more than a mile from campus and walk in dress shoes. Too many students trying to get into all of my classes; those that didn't make it into online tonight...for some of them, the pain on their faces is fresh in my mind. I felt underprepared, have lots of work tomorrow to get ready for the semester (which of course started today). In short, an exhausting and dramatic ten hours on campus.
And other things: a continued uncertainty about what, if anything, God wants me to do. A stronger sense of faith these last few days or weeks, but a feeling that, at 41, tenured, I'm already on a distinct, and secular, path. My 'gifts' belong to a middle-aged man. Theological questions I would have liked to wrestle with in my twenties only now present themselves; life is so bloody short.
Perhaps by God's grace, I stumble on this. Yes NTW is one of the most famous theologians in the world and I'm sorry I write about him so much here (and why do I feel like that's my standard...as if only some large-scale contribution counts; I used to think that about poetry and I haven't written in five years). But reading his mini-bio I thought about the messes I've already climbed through, the reformed days, the fundamentalist days, the whatever I am now days. I hope, you see, that perhaps all this will lead to Something.
One of the most distinctive features of the OT is Israel's belief in divine providence; God gives them Palestine and then later, because they weren't good Torah-ists, sends them into captivity, etc. I'm not saying God wasn't active in history through Israel, but sometimes they seem to have gotten it wrong in spots. What I want to do is talk about this concept at the individual level. Along with many other humans, I understand the drive to believe we all live in some kind of meaningfully scripted novel or play, that every scene, even the most grim and horrid, has meaning and purpose. That God is active in our, in my, life on a large-scale. That somehow all my experiences will mesh into some clear Vision.
But I don't believe much of that. Not at this time at least. The universe seems chaotic to me, biologically random. Not that God isn't doing something, won't do something in my life and on the earth as a whole, but my gosh just what? The outcome feels far from certain or assured. Should I go to seminary? Should I be an academic tied to ministry? Should I continue teaching college? Should I go into parish ministry as a priest (somehow that always sounds a little absurd)? Does God really 'call' anyone?
I guess if he does, one knows.
Still, I'm so hard on myself. And I have this odd grandiose streak to match my, uh, forceful self-assessment. Harry Potter. Aragorn. Motorcyle Boy. I'm in the middle of my own mythos, and it's tiring.
At nearly midnight, it's all truly tiring.
I hope that someday my remarkable past: the painful theological struggles all over the map, the years of therapy and recovery and group, the horrendous first marriage, the intriguing story of my re-integration into the church, all add up to something.
It's funny, because I think I am in part looking for identity. I have winced over my blue collar academic credentials before: city college, state college, more state college. I had the mind, I think, to go lots of places, but that same mind, unfortunately, also was very troubled; it spun inside me like a stone wheel, and it's amazing I've gotten as far as I have in my career. Part of the regret over not going ivy league or some such is the belief that going to a hallowed campus would give me a lifelong identity. Shoot, it might have helped! I know I take pleasure in saying I'm a professor now, even if I'm in academic janitor land (though there is no doubt my job, and my students, can be quite vibrant, real, and relevant, even when I don't know it).
Looking for identity seems a bad substitute for a call from God.
But then the 'call' thing is something that keeps coming up in other contexts. People outside my head, who know little about what goes on in my head (isn't this true between all of us) believe I have a special kind of leadership, a deacon or priest or religious academic leadership. This I don't imagine. I've heard it more and more.
Anyway, reading NTW's essay (I almost said blog or post) was helpful because his own journey was so long, so diverse, even if it became focused at different times. It included some depression and therapy. He kept changing his mind on many issues before he settled into the perspective for which he has become famous (and, I imagine, many things still remain unsolved in that acute, but patient, mind). What he says about being a Christian scholar and staying sane...that you have to admit 'I don't know' pretty often and wait for answers if they can ever come...I dig that too.
I don't think I want to become NTW-famous. I think I want to find and exercise my gifts, and that while that may feel like a fame-drive it's not the same sort of thing. Though I feel like I've wasted decades, I suppose Paul would have been happier if he could have skipped the Christian-slaughter phase of his own career; I don't have anything like that in my past, at least. In part, the vague pull I'm trying to describe is, in part, about doing what my writer friend J would describe as articulating my life in language, or narrating my own internal story, or some such thing. Being heard. Getting my inside out. In other part, my struggle with 'call' is, partly, about a deep need for meaning. Succesful campus politicking left me dry. What is more meaningful than work in the Kingdom? That's a big piece of it. I've always had The Deep Thirst for significance, for meaning, for purpose. The Deep Thirst. How will all this come together, if at all? Maybe need can be call.
Sure I wish I had been a clear-headed theology student at 22, in a real college, not some whacked-out 'reformed' bookstore. That just wasn't my path. I wish I had discovered the beauties, and general open-mindedness, of the Anglican tradition decades ago. I wish I had known the glories of the Eucharist long before now.
But now I think my writing is drifting off the page into nah-nah land. Nah nah nah. I need to crawl in beside my sweet sleeping wife and drop off myself. May God give me good rest, and a vision and the strength I need for tomorrow.
Your kingdom come. Your will be done. On earth as in heaven. Give me tonight my daily bread. Forgive my sins as I forgive those who sin against me. Save me from the time of trial.
And other things: a continued uncertainty about what, if anything, God wants me to do. A stronger sense of faith these last few days or weeks, but a feeling that, at 41, tenured, I'm already on a distinct, and secular, path. My 'gifts' belong to a middle-aged man. Theological questions I would have liked to wrestle with in my twenties only now present themselves; life is so bloody short.
Perhaps by God's grace, I stumble on this. Yes NTW is one of the most famous theologians in the world and I'm sorry I write about him so much here (and why do I feel like that's my standard...as if only some large-scale contribution counts; I used to think that about poetry and I haven't written in five years). But reading his mini-bio I thought about the messes I've already climbed through, the reformed days, the fundamentalist days, the whatever I am now days. I hope, you see, that perhaps all this will lead to Something.
One of the most distinctive features of the OT is Israel's belief in divine providence; God gives them Palestine and then later, because they weren't good Torah-ists, sends them into captivity, etc. I'm not saying God wasn't active in history through Israel, but sometimes they seem to have gotten it wrong in spots. What I want to do is talk about this concept at the individual level. Along with many other humans, I understand the drive to believe we all live in some kind of meaningfully scripted novel or play, that every scene, even the most grim and horrid, has meaning and purpose. That God is active in our, in my, life on a large-scale. That somehow all my experiences will mesh into some clear Vision.
But I don't believe much of that. Not at this time at least. The universe seems chaotic to me, biologically random. Not that God isn't doing something, won't do something in my life and on the earth as a whole, but my gosh just what? The outcome feels far from certain or assured. Should I go to seminary? Should I be an academic tied to ministry? Should I continue teaching college? Should I go into parish ministry as a priest (somehow that always sounds a little absurd)? Does God really 'call' anyone?
I guess if he does, one knows.
Still, I'm so hard on myself. And I have this odd grandiose streak to match my, uh, forceful self-assessment. Harry Potter. Aragorn. Motorcyle Boy. I'm in the middle of my own mythos, and it's tiring.
At nearly midnight, it's all truly tiring.
I hope that someday my remarkable past: the painful theological struggles all over the map, the years of therapy and recovery and group, the horrendous first marriage, the intriguing story of my re-integration into the church, all add up to something.
It's funny, because I think I am in part looking for identity. I have winced over my blue collar academic credentials before: city college, state college, more state college. I had the mind, I think, to go lots of places, but that same mind, unfortunately, also was very troubled; it spun inside me like a stone wheel, and it's amazing I've gotten as far as I have in my career. Part of the regret over not going ivy league or some such is the belief that going to a hallowed campus would give me a lifelong identity. Shoot, it might have helped! I know I take pleasure in saying I'm a professor now, even if I'm in academic janitor land (though there is no doubt my job, and my students, can be quite vibrant, real, and relevant, even when I don't know it).
Looking for identity seems a bad substitute for a call from God.
But then the 'call' thing is something that keeps coming up in other contexts. People outside my head, who know little about what goes on in my head (isn't this true between all of us) believe I have a special kind of leadership, a deacon or priest or religious academic leadership. This I don't imagine. I've heard it more and more.
Anyway, reading NTW's essay (I almost said blog or post) was helpful because his own journey was so long, so diverse, even if it became focused at different times. It included some depression and therapy. He kept changing his mind on many issues before he settled into the perspective for which he has become famous (and, I imagine, many things still remain unsolved in that acute, but patient, mind). What he says about being a Christian scholar and staying sane...that you have to admit 'I don't know' pretty often and wait for answers if they can ever come...I dig that too.
I don't think I want to become NTW-famous. I think I want to find and exercise my gifts, and that while that may feel like a fame-drive it's not the same sort of thing. Though I feel like I've wasted decades, I suppose Paul would have been happier if he could have skipped the Christian-slaughter phase of his own career; I don't have anything like that in my past, at least. In part, the vague pull I'm trying to describe is, in part, about doing what my writer friend J would describe as articulating my life in language, or narrating my own internal story, or some such thing. Being heard. Getting my inside out. In other part, my struggle with 'call' is, partly, about a deep need for meaning. Succesful campus politicking left me dry. What is more meaningful than work in the Kingdom? That's a big piece of it. I've always had The Deep Thirst for significance, for meaning, for purpose. The Deep Thirst. How will all this come together, if at all? Maybe need can be call.
Sure I wish I had been a clear-headed theology student at 22, in a real college, not some whacked-out 'reformed' bookstore. That just wasn't my path. I wish I had discovered the beauties, and general open-mindedness, of the Anglican tradition decades ago. I wish I had known the glories of the Eucharist long before now.
But now I think my writing is drifting off the page into nah-nah land. Nah nah nah. I need to crawl in beside my sweet sleeping wife and drop off myself. May God give me good rest, and a vision and the strength I need for tomorrow.
Your kingdom come. Your will be done. On earth as in heaven. Give me tonight my daily bread. Forgive my sins as I forgive those who sin against me. Save me from the time of trial.
Comments
Reading your description of your own struggle with calling and identity helps give some (at least temporary) clarity to my own struggle, which has been extreme of late.
I don't think - and I think I've told you this before, so bare with me - that we are called as much to do something as to be something. That is, calling, while it might have something to do with vocation insofar as vocation is connected to identity, is principally about identity and only secondarily about vocation.
If you have a vocation which "works" - that is, a vocation which comes out of your sense of identity, and through which you can do the sorts of things that you think that God has called you to do - then the question of vocation is answered. If, however, your vocation violates your sense of identity of in some significant way stifles your ability to do the work which God has called you to do, then perhaps you need to reopen the question of vocation.
But don't think that theologians are the only sorts of Christian scholars. C.S. Lewis, for instance, taught literature. You are a scholar, and you are a Christian, so you need not, unless God direct you otherwise, insist on changing what you do in order to be a Christian scholar. You are a Christian scholar; one who teaches literature.
You also need not (I hope) be ordained to be a minister. You are called to minister in all that you do - every act should be in some subtle way an act of ministry. Personally I think that our churches would be stronger if people like you and I, who have gifts and interests in ministry, consciously chose to remain in the laity in order to strengthen lay ministry. When our best and brightest Christian disciples choose to be shepards rather than sheep, our flock of sheep start to look pretty weak. We create professional class of religious people, the "serious" Christians whose faith is sufficient for us amatuers.
But now I'm just rambling, and projecting my own issues onto you. Suffice it to say that, as you listen for the voice of God, you need not assume that God, in calling you to take your faith ever more seriously, is also calling you to change your vocation. Perhaps God is simply asking that you bring more and more of your faith into your current vocation, looking for ways in which to serve the cause of Christ just as you are.
Keep listening.
I often pray for myself and others that our hands would be bound to the work God wants us to do and that our feet would be bound to the paths he wants us to walk. It prevents me from getting all tangled up in the what/the doing and helps me to focus on the how/the being.
Wherever God calls us there is the temptation to fear and the invitation to be transformed.
you are more than sweet; fear and invitation, yes, perhaps I feel both. Thanks for posting here. Your family stories on your own blog are precious.
And Chris,
you have become a true blog-friend; I know you have wrestled, and lived, through much of this and you're not even 30.
I like the be and do distinction. Part of the problem is that in the Episcopal church, at least my church, there isn't a lot of room for the kind of work I want to do, preaching/teaching and writing, without a formal position. Or so it feels.
And I relish the idea of being able to engross myself in these ideas for a living. A living. I ended up teaching English, frankly, by a certain default.
But I have much to think about and years to think about it. One thing that will always be hard to walk away from is my work-schedule, retirement, benefits and salary! It isn't a lot of money, but it provides an ever increasing security I never knew as a young person.
Best to you both. It is nice to cry out in the darkness and be heard by friends.
Whatever.
But I really like NT Wright, too.
Krav Mom