Sermon given by Intern Minister Tori Rosati, February 6, 2022.
When we first decided on February’s worship theme of vocation – I was very much wide eyed and aspirational in my thinking about the topic. However, as I’ve thought back this last week on my life and how and where these ideas have shown up – I realize this is tender topic – it certainly was for me and I expect for many of us - especially in these pandemic days. We all have such different entry points and relationships to notions of vocation, call, life’s work, and purpose – themes that have been profoundly altered, magnified and challenged over the last two years. So…I offer this to us this morning – humbly, and as starting point to a larger conversation over the days and weeks ahead. These are my musings in this moment in time, and I’d love to hear yours…
For most of my teens and well into my twenties, my jobs were waiting tables. From the ice cream and sandwich shop in my hometown, to the pizza restaurant where I met Tim – in many ways I was formed in restaurants - running food from back kitchens to eagerly waiting customers out front – memorizing menus, adding up checks, wiping crumbs into towels and vacuuming rugs at the end of a busy night.
I loved every minute of it. I loved getting brief peeks into people’s lives, often at some of their most precious moments – first dates, anniversaries, family celebrations. I loved the constant motion and dropping down into that sense of flow on a busy night where the rhythm of my body skated across the surface of that night’s rush — connected to some force greater than myself. But most of all, I loved the people – the regulars that week after week, sometimes day after day would come by for a meal, a friendly face that for a few moments in the joys and pains of their lives, genuinely wanted to know how they were, who they were, and how they could be helped.
As I am reflecting on this month’s worship theme: The Way of Vocation, these years of good work come to mind. I am reminded of one restaurant in particular that I worked at – an old 1950’s diner with the Naugahyde booths and silver saucer stools at the counters. They had a 5 page menu with much of it homemade each day with offerings that spanned the decades from creamed chipped beef on toast to buffalo chicken wraps – something for everyone. There was a real community of people who came in every day – many of them retired. Some would come in once a day and others for every meal. We waitstaff took care of them, listened to their stories, inquired about their lives, and called to check in on them if they didn’t come in for a few days. They in turn gave us life advice, encouragement and support – asking after us after we’d left and staying in touch over the years. It was a real community and as I look back – the closest thing to a faith community I had at that time in my life – faith in love, mutual care, and each other. A shared ministry, if you will, amongst teaspoons clanking in coffee cups, banana cream pie and warm bread rolls.
Of all the work I have done in my life thus far, that job rises to the top as one that I would call vocational. Frederick Buechner speaking of vocation says, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” (1) This was surely the case in that diner so many years ago. The gladness of community, story-telling, witness, and caring meeting the literal and figurative hunger to be seen, known, and cared for.
Our culture has many ways to define vocation. Vocational schools, that have grown over the last few decades, train young people directly for specific trades and professions. In religious communities, vocation is often associated with a calling from outside oneself, a Divine lure toward work in service to a Greater purpose in the name of God. To be sure, in these pandemic days – the clamoring questions about life’s work and purpose are present in such different and sometimes deeply challenging ways. How might we make sense of these terms? Call, vocation, purpose. Is there something useful for us all to quiet those voices and center down as Howard Thurman invited us to – to think of our own lives (spiritual, professional, and personal) as vocational – transcending the social expectations and norms that press in upon us in this time?
Professor, minister, writer, activist, and mystic, Gregory Ellison, in his book, Fearless Dialogues, explores this notion of vocation in some powerful ways foster social change. (2) Ellison founded the Fearless Dialogues organization following the Ferguson uprising, a non-profit that creates unique spaces for unlikely community partners to have hard, heartfelt conversations on difficult subjects that address systemic social oppressions – racism, police violence and economic inequity.
The “Less” in “Fear-Less” dialogues refers to a posture of humility where we, as Howard Thurman might say, “center down” (3) to meet one another at the core of who we are. The idea is that in order to be more of who we are – we have to be less of what society expects us to be.
Here is what that looks like. At a Fearless Dialogue community conversation, participants are asked to select a name tag that describes what Ellison calls their “soul gifts.” These gifts are core features of one’s Self that transcends our job, functions, roles in the world – these gifts we carry with us no matter what we do – gifts of healer, teacher, activist, neighbor… In FD, these soul gifts allow for people to see and be seen as something larger and deeper than the ways in which society expects them to function. Be seen as who they have always been. In this spirit…every single person that walks through the doors of a fearless dialogues event is greeted by a facilitators who looks directly into their eyes and says, “It is good to finally see you. Welcome to Fearless Dialogues. Are you ready for change?” “It is good to finally see you.”
These soul gifts allow us to expand our notions of how to be successful, how to be relevant and make change in the world. I was asked my whole life, as many of us are, what do you want to be when you grow up? As if that was one thing? One fixed point that we arrive at one day. So much of our identity is tied to these external markers. Our society teaches us that there are acceptable and unacceptable ways to be successful or make change in the world. Ellison, in contrast, encourages us to think about our life work beyond titles, roles, and social standing, to one of vocation that draws out the various passions, skills, and talents that have been there the whole time – like Rabbie, from our earlier story and what he and others saw in the giant.
Living life vocationally, then is like the whittling down of the figures that Rabbie carved, we are whittling down to our core – those parts of ourselves that have always been there – cloaked in the social expectations and relevances that we portray to the world around us. The greater purpose of our lives resides in here – that place we can only see…as Rabbie reminded us…with our hearts.
As our wondering question from the Time for All Ages asked, “if Rabbie made a carving of us, what might it look like?” What soul gifts might the carver uncover that have been hidden within the wood of society’s expectations of us? Who have we always been?
As I look back on my life’s path through my heart, I can see that I am not that different a person than I was all those years ago, refilling coffee mugs and leaning in to hear someone share a precious part of their life with me. As I trace the trajectory of my own vocational journey – at its heart – it is a journey to become (or live more fully into) who I have always been. And that is more than one thing – more than one job, one experience, one gift. I am a minister, but also a writer, a mother and a neighbor…And I will always be these things – no matter the job I have, the season of my life, or what I am doing. I will be those things not when I grow up, not somewhere down the line when I have achieved x, y, or z but this very moment… this hour…this minute…this breath. I take these vocations with me.
I think it is important, though to name that it is a privilege to have the space and time to reflect on our life’s work in these ways and live into them. As the pandemic has shown us, the economic realities and limitations on our lives often make decisions for us – it is not always a choice and it can be wearisome amidst the demands associated with oppressive social realities and changing economies to be asked to think about our lives in this way. But I wonder too, if it can also be liberating and a call to all of us to fight for and ensure that everyone can live impassioned, purposeful lives. This is soul work that we can’t do alone.
Just like the giant needed Rabbie and the townsfolk to help him see his gift – how do we help each other live into who we really are? A faith community offers us a unique place to uncover our individual vocations. Our church home provides a place to “Center Down”. To leave the clamoring questions of the outside world at the door and to rest into who we truly are. And we do this together. We look with our hearts at those around us, we uncover things – parts of each other waiting to be felt, known, and shared – in service to the common good we build, in here and out there. The common good that strives to reshape our larger world into a place where everyone has a seat at the table. Where everyone is welcomed into mutual care and made to feel like they belong.
When I look around this faith community, I am struck by the ways that you all are living out your vocational gifts – and “struck” isn’t even the right word – at moments I am in awe. The ways you help each other center down into who you are. So, in this spirit, I invite us to take a moment, if you are able, to scan through the faces on your screen and see each other as the ministers…the healers…the activists…the teachers…the neighbors…the story-tellers…the caretakers…the friends…the artists…and the leaders that you are.
In the time ahead – as our world continues to churn – as the waves of pandemic and unrest crest and break over and over again on our shore – let us strive to be less what others expect us to be and more ourselves. Let us hold the unformed, unexamined, taken for granted block of our lives and whittle it down to see what is at its core – that place where our gladness and the world’s hunger meet. Like the flow of busy restaurant night – as we float from one task, one table, one moment to the next – let us ask ourselves what comes with us as we lean across the counters of our lives to listen to the story that wants to be told – the person who wants to be known – the life that wants to be cared for. And then live out of that place whereever we go. Let us center down into our shared ministry, common soul gifts, and infinite potential to rest, finally into that sacred place where we look into each other eyes and truly say, “It is good to finally see you.”
Notes:
1. Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking, A Seekers ABC, 118.
2. Gregory Ellison, Fearless Dialogues: A New Movement for Justice.
3. Howard Thurman, “How Good it Is to Center Down!” Meditations of the Heart.