Tag: dignity

Connecting Calling to the Dignity of Labor

The author reflects on students’ struggles with vocation and purpose, noting how traditional vocational frameworks can induce anxiety instead of inspiration. He highlights misconceptions regarding identity and achievements, emphasizing the need to evaluate vocational exploration in relation to the dignity of all labor. The series aims to confront these issues and promote a more conscientious vocational discernment for our students.

A series on vocation, the dignity of labor, and the misconceptions that prevent us from valuing all work.

“Am I doing what I’m supposed to be doing?” 

Recently, I met with a group of students who were articulating the kind of sincere desires we so often hear in vocational work. One of the great joys in this kind of work with my students—which I’m sure is true for many of us—is accompanying them as they wrestle with these big questions of meaning and purpose. 

At the same time, those questions often come at us like a double-edged sword, because students are not always asking them from a place of deep joy. Frederick Buechner’s classic formulation of vocation, where God calls a person to “the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet” is inspirational, but it can also induce anxiety. And the students with whom I recently met were asking questions from that place. Instead of being inspired, they were worried that they were somehow getting it wrong. To them, vocation feels hidden and so morally urgent that missing or misunderstanding a calling is tantamount to sin or vice. It seems to me that if the formation programs I lead create angst in my students, I might be doing something wrong. 

Continue reading “Connecting Calling to the Dignity of Labor”

Recovering Deep Gladness

When we compel young people to discern a specific career path as early as high school, or encourage them to spend time only on resume-building activities in college, we fail to honor their complete humanity. Instead of asking the question, What’s your major?, we should embrace questions like, What brings you joy?

When I introduce students to Frederick Buechner’s adage about being called to “the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet,” I ask them which side of that Venn diagram they think has been underemphasized in their prior learning about vocation. Most often they mention that “the world’s deep hunger” needs more attention. This might be true, or maybe they think it’s what I want to hear. Perhaps they have been told so often that they are part of a self-centered generation that it has made them reluctant to seek their own gladness or name it as valuable. Recently, however, an insightful minority report stood out. A student responded that they might have been told to focus on themselves, but they sure haven’t been encouraged to seek deep gladness. If anything, they’ve been told to focus on themselves by building their resumes.

Continue reading “Recovering Deep Gladness”