This post is framed as an imagined dialogue between two friends: Joel is a mentor to the narrator, Sarah. In what follows, Sarah narrates a conversation between the the two of them about an ongoing tension between authentically helping students with vocational discernment and aiming at the ideal and pre-imagined results of programmatic “purity.”
My friend Joel sat at a coffeehouse table in the sun with a small stack of art books and his notebook. When I arrived, he welcomed me, no matter that I was a little late for our appointment yet again. He and I have been meeting frequently since right after I arrived on campus in my new role as lead vocational counselor.
The last time we met, Joel had made a cautionary remark about purity that I wanted to follow up on. When I sat down, he smiled broadly and began chatting about spring flowers, as the two of us share a keen interest in plants and gardening. On this day, he had been reading and writing about the American painter, Philip Guston; Joel’s writing about his reading seems to be an admirable life habit.
Continue reading “Vocation and Purity—Let’s Be Honest”