Episode three of this season of NetVUE’s podcast Callings features Bonnie Miller-McLemore, whose new book, Follow Your Bliss and Other Lies About Calling, brings forward the more difficult nuances and complexities of vocational discernment. Bonnie is the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Chair and Professor of Religion, Psychology, and Culture Emerita at Vanderbilt University. Nationally recognized for her leadership in women’s and childhood studies and pastoral and practical theologies, she has published eighteen books in these areas, as well as over a hundred chapters and journal articles. (She has also contributed a post to Vocation Matters: Follow Your Bliss? Bad Advice for Calling.)
In Follow Your Bliss, Bonnie explores the ways our callings can be fractured or blocked, relinquished or conflicted, missed or unexpected. In her interview with Callings hosts Erin VanLaningham and John Barton, she questions superficial and overly positive understandings of vocation and seeks to complicate our understanding of it as rooted solely in individual agency. As she observes, “This fancy word calling evolves over a lifetime—in relationship—beyond our individual preferences, or choices, or desires.” As powerful and positive as our callings can be, they can also be difficult, emerging in conflicted and even painful ways.
By grounding calling in the realities of everyday life—especially those realities that we find challenging—Bonnie reminds us of the importance of being kind to ourselves and forgiving ourselves and others. As we realize the myriad ways our callings may be difficult, she urges us to continue to find them worthy of pursuit and consideration.
Click hereto listen to the episode featuring Bonnie Miller-McLemore titled “The Double Edge of Calling.”
Geoffrey W. Bateman is the editor of Vocation Matters.