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I am about to head to the grocery store for the fourth time in four days. I am not proud of adding to Atlanta traffic and I am sure that my frequent appearance only adds to the chaos the checkers and baggers are experiencing at present. But for some reason, whenever there is snow in the forecast, I feel my pantry must be stocked with every ingredient known to humankind. And yet I always leave the store forgetting one. Today the trip will be for orange juice. Something I could easily live without for a couple of days, but which my husband (who has a bad head cold and cough) keeps asking about.
Him: “Did you get orange juice?”
Me: “Oh, gosh darnit.” (Or words sort of like that, but of a slightly stronger character.)
Again, I think we could both live without the orange juice, but on the chance that the two inches of snow and sleet we are expecting tomorrow traps us in the house for a whole month, I suppose I should just go get it.
Yes, I did say two inches, and I imagine for those of you reading this who live north of the Mason-Dixon line this is a very perplexing statement. But remember we live in Atlanta – a city of 5.2 million people that owns one snowplow. So, while our poor son keeps bouncing from friend’s house to friend’s house trying to evade the wild fires in L.A. (and calling us at midnight Eastern Time to let us know where he has landed for the night), we arm ourselves with orange juice hoping that it will somehow deter icy tree limbs from coming through the roof.
My husband and I have stopped saying, “Happy New Year” to people because it feels superficial and willfully naïve. Instead, we’ve been saying, “May you have a blessed New Year.” Or simply, “It’s a New Year!” Because it still is, regardless of whatever is going on with our deeply distressed Mother Nature or the political forecast. And we still get to decide how to respond to it.
Yesterday as I was driving (for Grocery Store Visit #3), I heard on a podcast the loveliest proverb: “We don’t get to control the wind, but we do get to decide what to do with the sails.” Through what lens will I interpret the events of my time, and then how shall I respond to the situation before me today? That is the real question of each new year, no? We could even say each new morning. In many ways, it is the question that compelled me to write Redeeming Power, because I could focus my energy on all the things I can’t change, or I can focus my energy on what I can and ask how to do that in constructive and healthy ways.
Since speaking with the good folk of the National Religious Vocation Conference this past November, I have found myself framing this fundament question in the language of vocation. I’ve been reflecting on whether vocation is something that we proactively pursue (i.e. I think here is where my gifts lie and what would give me joy and I will be conscientious about heading in that direction) or whether it is primarily a function of response (i.e. here are needs in the world that are changing all of the time and I do the best I can to respond to life as it reveals itself today.) And, even though I have tended to frame it as an either-or, I am coming to suspect vocation lies at the intersection of the two. To paraphrase Frederick Buechner’s classic definition: “Vocation is where your own deep joy meets the world’s deep need.” It is what you can freely and joyfully do to address the particulars of your time and space. It involves really big decisions like, “Shall I marry? And, if so, whom?” but is lived out in the small ones like, “And should I go out in the frigid cold to get this person orange juice?”
This week, I’d like to share with you two preachings that are tangentially related to what I’m talking about here with vocation in daily life. The first is something I prepared for the Feast of the Holy Family this past Dec. 29 about the importance of paying attention to signs of vocation that appear around the age of twelve. (Something that my life in the atrium with children of this age has made me especially aware of.) The second is a reflection on today’s Gospel (for Jan. 10) about what God’s will is for our lives. I think you will enjoy them both.
Meanwhile, may you have a blessed New Year. And please pray for me as I head back to the grocery store.