Tag: paying attention

Active Listening as Vocational Discernment

We live in a distracted age in which smartphones and social media threaten to interrupt us constantly, but especially college students who often struggle to maintain focus and attention. Yet attentiveness is essential for vocational exploration and discernment. This post explores how active listening can help mitigate distractions, foster meaningful conversations, and support students in their journey to figure out who they are and how they want to be in their futures.

“We’ll leave the TV and the radio behind. Don’t you wonder what we’ll find?”

Joe Jackson

Decades before smartphones and tablets, Joe Jackson’s lyrics about an upcoming date night anticipates an evening without the media distractions of that time.

Although media platforms have changed, such distractions are still plentiful and time consuming. Most college students spend more than four hours per day on their smartphones, and nearly half of teenagers say they’re online “almost constantly.” At any time, we can escape our present circumstances and explore unlimited opportunities for stimulation. No longer forced to make small talk or sit with our thoughts, we can explore colorful, scintillating messages from anywhere.

photo of people engaged on their phones
Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

While these platforms can connect us, they also compete for our limited attention. Attentiveness is essential to vocational discernment, so much so that Scott Mattingly describes it as the “foundation of every vocational journey.” In Living Vocationally: The Journey of the Called Life, Paul Wadell and Charles Pinches describe attentiveness as a virtue that helps us to be fully present. “We cannot be responsible,” they write, “without an accurate perception of reality, and we cannot accurately perceive reality without growing in attentiveness.”

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A Call to the Small: Barbara Brown Taylor

The latest episode of NetVUE’s podcast Callings features Barbara Brown Taylor, a renowned author and public theologian. She discusses the importance of recognizing personal and external callings, emphasizing the value of small, local actions. Taylor encourages prioritizing life-affirming pursuits and remaining attentive to personal vocations amidst life’s demands.

Barbara Brown Taylor

NetVUE’s podcast Callings has released its first episode of the new year, featuring New York Times best-selling author Barbara Brown Taylor. In addition to the many award-winning books that she has written—including Holy Envy, Learning to Walk in the Dark, and An Altar in the World—Barbara has served as an Episcopal priest, a teacher, and a public theologian. For many years, she held an endowed chair in religion and philosophy at Piedmont University, a NetVUE member institution, and she has served on several seminary faculties as well as the theological studies certificate program at Arrendale State Prison for women. Barbara has been recognized as one of the most effective preachers in the English-speaking world by Baylor University, and in 2014, Time magazine included her on its list of “The 100 Most Influential People.” She has been named the Georgia Woman of the Year and recently elected to the Georgia Writer’s Hall of Fame. And beyond all these accolades, she continues to write and speak and serve as the caretaker of a farm in rural Georgia.

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