Tag: attention

Attention and Contradiction: Willie James Jennings

Willie James Jennings, an esteemed theologian at Yale Divinity School, emphasizes the importance of belonging in education through his insights shared on NetVUE’s podcast. He advocates for educators to engage with students as fellow learners and highlights the need to confront racial injustices within education systems while committing to challenging antisemitism and advocating for Palestinians.

Willie James Jennings

The most recent episode of NetVUE’s podcast Callings features an interview with Willie James Jennings. Willie is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Systematic Theology and Africana Studies at Yale Divinity School. A highly sought-after speaker, Willie teaches and writes in areas that include theological anthropology, liberation theologies, cultural identities and race theory, and environmental studies. He is the author of numerous articles and several award-winning books. He is also an ordained Baptist minister, and before completing a Master of Divinity from Fuller Seminary and a PhD from Duke University, he received his undergraduate education from Calvin University, a NetVUE member institution. Willie was also the keynote speaker for the NetVUE Unconference in March of 2021.

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Saying Yes to Weirdness and Wandering

We are earthlings. Walking the earth is a practice of being who we are. Culturally, however, we are viewed as weird if we befriend birds and listen to the wind and hug trees, or find ourselves in our embodied earthliness rather than in our tech-mediated identity and status.

I always arrive for class five or ten minutes early to set up—log in to the computer, turn on the projector, get my notes arranged, the usual. When I began teaching in 2009, the classroom was generally noisy with student chatter during these minutes. Over the years, and especially since the start of the pandemic, things have grown quieter. Many students now walk into the room with headphones on, looking at their phones. I have to speak loudly just to cut through the silence with my “Okay, let’s get started.” Recently, a student left his earbuds in, and when I asked him to remove them, he told me it made no difference since they were on “transparency mode.”

I get it; I have earbuds, too. I seldom run an errand without entertainment running through my head or go for a walk without a reality buffer. Like my students, and, indeed, like many in this society, I find habits of attention difficult to cultivate. Part of the problem is my trying to remember and practice these intentions alone, while the alternative is backed by corporate interests and the attention-capturing tech they design. As Thomas Merton says, we live in “a world in which [human beings] are dominated by massive organizations and rigid institutions which seek only to exploit them for money and power.” Even when we intentionally use our phones and other technology for felicitous purposes, we are buying into something whose intended aim is indifferent to our happiness.

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Attention, Please: Attentiveness and Vocation

If we succumb to dwelling on the past or living for the future without remaining attentive to the present, we become disconnected from reality.

At the 2021 NetVUE UnConference, Willie James Jennings spoke of attention, or attentiveness, as fundamental to vocation, as the inner logic of calling. He advocated for cultivating students’ attentiveness to themselves, hearing their own voice, as well as of the world around them, hearing with new depth. On the following day, Paul Wadell and Charles Pinches, citing their book, Living Vocationally: The Journey of the Called Life, echoed: “The most basic calling is to pay attention.” Even more recently, Jason Stevens detailed a particular application of attentiveness within his first-year writing courses, quoting Wadell and Pinches at length.

Over the past several months, I’ve found myself coming to a similar conclusion, namely that attentiveness is more than a virtue—that it is, rather, the foundation of every vocational journey, individually and collectively. This conclusion took shape during the spring as I taught a new course exploring the impact and meaning of the twin pandemics of COVID-19 and systemic racism as a lead-in to exploring the broader impact and meaning of pivotal moments for our vocational journeys. Building on several readings used in this course, as well as additional sources, this post is aimed at elaborating on the critical importance of attention and suggesting corresponding applications. 

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First Year, First Virtue: Attentiveness, Technology, and First Year Writing

Attentiveness is essential to beginning our vocational journeys. And few things are under greater assault in our culture.

If I want to rile students up and get debate going, I mention Vermont State Senator John Rodger’s recent proposed bill to ban smartphones for anyone under 21, and his remark that smartphones are “just as dangerous as guns.” Student response to the debate over technology is a mixture of spirited defense and despairing acknowledgement of its harms. More and more, this debate has taken a vocational inflection for me. I think that the first-year writing course is an excellent place to begin to make students aware of, concerned by, and proactive about that which imperils their ability to thoughtfully and responsibly engage in their many callings, and especially their calling to conversations.

In Living Vocationally: The Journey of the Called Life, Paul J. Wadell and Charlie Pinches suggest that the first virtue required to begin our vocational journeys is attentiveness. Paying attention, so the argument runs, matters because “at the basis of every calling, whether a friendship, a career, or being patient with a stranger, is a summons to responsibility; however, we cannot be responsible without an accurate perception of reality, and we cannot accurately perceive reality without growing in attentiveness” (159). For Wadell and Pinches, attention is a “situating virtue” (along with humility and gratitude) because “instead of the thoughtlessness or indifference by which we turn in on ourselves and become carelessly disengaged with life, the virtue of attention forms us into persons who are fully present to life” (157). I agree that attentiveness is essential to beginning our vocational journeys. And few things are under greater assault in our culture than attentiveness.

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The Chastening of Careerists, Part 2

In a previous post, I introduced two related concerns I have with the otherwise difficult, commendable work of turning a career into a calling. My concerns, again, are these:

Screen Shot 2018-07-25 at 4.56.04 PMFirst: If I were to fully and without remainder make my career into a calling, would that collapse the difference between them? Would calling and career become synonyms, such that the first no longer transcends and troubles the second?

Second: If it is I who makes meaning, and forges a path, and crafts a job, and even serves others through my work, does this mean that a calling is something that I always actively invent and employ, rather than hear and respond to? Can meaning, purpose, and service fall fully within my control without turning them into something they’re not?

Here I want to explore the second, related claim—namely, that strategically transforming a career into a calling risks giving too much custody and charge (not to mention credit) to any one human being. It risks obscuring the receptive, responsive dimension of being called, which is otherwise decisive to the phenomenon. Continue reading “The Chastening of Careerists, Part 2”