St. Andrew's Parish

Is there more than one call in life?

Life is not a straight line, no matter how hard we work to make it so, no matter how certain we are that it must be. Life, it seems, is a cosmic game of dice: in today’s society we are born in one town, raised in another, go to school in a third, settle down in a fourth, and retire in a fifth. That is the pulp out of which we are to mold a life and develop a passion and find a purpose and leave a legacy for the next generation to come. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. We are meant to shape our souls out of the leavings of it and, rich or poor, female or male, leave this world less a statistic and more an icon to light the way for those who are to follow us. Anything else is not a life at all; it is at best an existence.”

Nor, then, is a call an end point of life. On the contrary, it is only the beginning. My call is the point at which I begin to work out in myself what I am really meant to do in life that justifies my existence, that gives me the right to have been born.

A call is what we have been given for the sake of both fullness of life and divine service. It is the compilation of our natural abilities and interests, our fiercest commitments and passions, which then become the purpose of our lives. It is that in me which makes the world a better place to be and shapes the entirety of myself as well. Finding that amalgam of gifts and circumstances in life can conceivably take years and demand multiple attempts in the process, all of them side roads to the determination of the self. But in the end, it is ourselves that we will find there.

Is there more than one call?  Probably not, though there are certainly variations of it along the way embedded in everything we do. But without a doubt, each of the byways on the road is a small step on the way to it. As Emerson taught, life is a “progress,” a passage through time, “not a station,” never a stopping place. It is a progression of events that leads to insight, to self-knowledge, to the direction of the home within. One experience at a time, we begin to understand who we really are and what happiness really is for us. Then what the poet Emerson wrote becomes glaringly clear: “Life,” he said, “is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.”

– from Following the Path by Joan Chittister (Random House)

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