Hearing Vocation In The Accidents of Their Work
Archive Imported from my Original Blog -- The Invisible Next Step
I am a full time, tenure tracked professor at a liberal arts college.
This is not where I expected to be. This is not what I wanted to do. This is not how I imagined things.
So I find it strange to see that I am tolerably good at it.
I find it heartening that perhaps all of the accidents and compromises and negotiations that got me here *may* yield something of promise.
As a boy, I was Max Fisher. I was designed for the stage. And when the stage wasn't easily or readily available to me -- I flung myself onto other stages and started directing the goings on as if I were some sort of master-director (I wasn't; I'm not). That same boy would pour over the movie ads in the newspaper, memorizing every detail, since, of course, we did not attend the movie theater -- 1.) there was nothing good there in the first place, 2.) if there was, why was it *there*?, 3.) if we were to go, someone from church might see us and *think* that we were going to one of the bad movies. So Hollywood became forbidden fruit. Because? I wasn't allowed to taste it? Because I was foreordained to love storytelling? Because of its cultural capital?
As an adolescent, I was encouraged to pursue the staqe. That way, said my parents, and youth leaders and teachers at my Christian School, I could bring the dramatic arts to the church. Because I would not want to work in Hollywood or on the television (which was growing in its grip upon our family -- now that we could watch syndicated shows from the Good Old Days) or in New York. Big Apple? Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil? The forbidden fruit? A tree with a long oblong chip in the trunk?
And then as a senior in college, I affirmed another lifelong dream. I wanted to be a writer. A novelist. And I scribbled a couple of short stories into literary journals, won a small contest, was rejected from two MFA programs and, as consolation, tried to invent a career that could afford to keep me scribbling.
And five years later I walked down an outdoor aisle, was hooded, congratulated, and suddenly -- accidentally -- just before I turned thirty -- made to work at a full time job with benefits and pay scales and raises -- instead of quilting together work and gifts and opportunity and talent into a piecemeal something that would allow me to keep scribbling.
Last year, I grew suspicious of the whole process. Still scribbling, still scrapping, I ventured in a new direction. What if I just admitted that I was disappointed with this life. What if I just admitted that I wanted a different life, *and* with all the extra resources I had left, *chased* that new life?
And so for all of last year, I have fermented in my discontent, dialoguing with Lynn, hammering out a promising screenplay, and doing my dayjob with enough fervor to keep everyone at the college confident that I was not sneaking into the "bad" cinema...
I spent a few days in Santa Barbara and Hollywood this Spring, saw both of my writing partners, spent a day with a television writer from PAX (the *irony*! on so many levels), and suddenly found myself realizing that I didn't want that life. Not now. Not given what I'd have to leave. I'm still hammering out the scripts (with more and less enthusiasm), but realizing that perhaps this path that I am on is a good one for me.
Not that this feels like a path. In _Sacred Journey_, Buechner tells the story of his life and recounts the whispers of God to him in the most unlikely places. Whispers that he never recognized until much later as having beckoned him toward God. I tell my college freshman when we talk about _The Will of God as a Way of Life_ that I've never experienced the will of God as a path -- or even the clear blazes on trees spaced evenly apart. What always happens to me is that anytime that my to-do list abates enough for me to take stock of where I am, make a decision, decide to follow God, or try to make sense of my life -- that I look around me and I find that I'm at the deepest place imaginable in the woods. Nothing is recognizable. There are no clearings in the distance. But I hear a whisper -- "over here." But by the time I turn around, there's no voice. Maybe even there never was a voice. But *now* there's something about *this* direction which makes a bit of sense so I move...
But to you, reader, this woodsy metaphor seems to offer irational hope. A "feeling of peace" emerging from...what? A confidence which doesn't make sense out of any particular past. It doesn't offer promise about what's come before....
But you weren't lucky enough to have grown up at Treasure Island with me, either.
Every summer, our family pilgrimaged North to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where we wound down a two lane highway to a dirt and gravel road, hewn out of the woods by my grandfather. You didn't feel the surge of endorphins that we all did as we peered through the windshield and through the dense pine forest and strained at the curves in the road, the whole station wagon engulfed by a rollicking chorus of "Around the Corner's the Cabin!" (to the tune of "for he's a jolly good fellow". There -- that's all you needed to sing it -- because there are no other lyrics -- "and now we're almost there" -- sometimes).
But I was lucky enough to spend those two or three weeks every summer in the woods with my father, in a boat fishing together with my brothers, building treehouses, making fires, learning archery, reading novels in hammocks, racing through "treasure hunts" with elaborate clues and absurd feats of strength and will, playing boardgames as the sunset over the bay.
On many days my father would take us into the woods, hatchet in hand, seeking the trails he had blazed in his boyhood. To "blaze" a trail means to leave an oblong chip on a large tree -- these trees spaced a minimum of ten feet from each other. He taught us how to hold the hatchet, how to "read" the moss on the Northern side of the tree, how to line up trees in multiple directions to avoid circling endlessly in the woods. From those days, I remember everything. I remember the light through the trees, I remember the crisp Northern air, I remember the nervous excited sensation that we may be getting lost or we may be finding something extraordinary, i remember the sense of tradition that enveloped us. My father, at my age had walked in these same places, his father before him. We looked together for the next blaze. Some of the trees had fallen. Some fallen prey to the spruce worms in the late 70's. But when we found the blazes, they were so ancient -- yet so clear. They had been there for a thousand years of possibility and looked as old, but they were as clear as if I had stepped through the wardrobe just three days ago myself and en route to Cair Paravel, blazed them myself.
The byproduct of these days? I cannot feel lost in these woods. (In any woods?) I feel a quiet calm confidence in my training. If we need it I can help us to find a way to an edge of the treeline. But for now, lets just look at what's around, I tell my wife when I take her hiking, pathless through these woods. Because I always watch everything with the trained eye hoping for an ancient blaze on a tree -- every uniquely fallen tree, every surprising fungus, every jutting lichen strewn rock marks my sense of place. And these symbols reassure me.
So proceeding at intuition, it turns out, recognizing: "oh yes, *that*!" is less a blind faith in feeling, and more of a recognition of the tradition and history that has made me.
There! There! That mark on that tree! Over there! Is that just a place where an old branch used to be, or could it be a happy accidental call from my father? From my father's father? Despite the trees that have rained down through these eons, the scrubby undergrowth that has risen to meet them, the hopelesly similiar look of so much of this landscpae -- that voices of meaning can emerge? That if I find those voices, I may make something genuine of my own?
that perhhaps -- all of the accidents and compromises and negotiations that got me here *may* yield something of promise?
I am a full time, tenure tracked professor at a liberal arts college.
This is not where I expected to be. This is not what I wanted to do. This is not how I imagined things.
So I find it strange to see that I am tolerably good at it.
I find it heartening that perhaps all of the accidents and compromises and negotiations that got me here *may* yield something of promise.
As a boy, I was Max Fisher. I was designed for the stage. And when the stage wasn't easily or readily available to me -- I flung myself onto other stages and started directing the goings on as if I were some sort of master-director (I wasn't; I'm not). That same boy would pour over the movie ads in the newspaper, memorizing every detail, since, of course, we did not attend the movie theater -- 1.) there was nothing good there in the first place, 2.) if there was, why was it *there*?, 3.) if we were to go, someone from church might see us and *think* that we were going to one of the bad movies. So Hollywood became forbidden fruit. Because? I wasn't allowed to taste it? Because I was foreordained to love storytelling? Because of its cultural capital?
As an adolescent, I was encouraged to pursue the staqe. That way, said my parents, and youth leaders and teachers at my Christian School, I could bring the dramatic arts to the church. Because I would not want to work in Hollywood or on the television (which was growing in its grip upon our family -- now that we could watch syndicated shows from the Good Old Days) or in New York. Big Apple? Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil? The forbidden fruit? A tree with a long oblong chip in the trunk?
And then as a senior in college, I affirmed another lifelong dream. I wanted to be a writer. A novelist. And I scribbled a couple of short stories into literary journals, won a small contest, was rejected from two MFA programs and, as consolation, tried to invent a career that could afford to keep me scribbling.
And five years later I walked down an outdoor aisle, was hooded, congratulated, and suddenly -- accidentally -- just before I turned thirty -- made to work at a full time job with benefits and pay scales and raises -- instead of quilting together work and gifts and opportunity and talent into a piecemeal something that would allow me to keep scribbling.
Last year, I grew suspicious of the whole process. Still scribbling, still scrapping, I ventured in a new direction. What if I just admitted that I was disappointed with this life. What if I just admitted that I wanted a different life, *and* with all the extra resources I had left, *chased* that new life?
And so for all of last year, I have fermented in my discontent, dialoguing with Lynn, hammering out a promising screenplay, and doing my dayjob with enough fervor to keep everyone at the college confident that I was not sneaking into the "bad" cinema...
I spent a few days in Santa Barbara and Hollywood this Spring, saw both of my writing partners, spent a day with a television writer from PAX (the *irony*! on so many levels), and suddenly found myself realizing that I didn't want that life. Not now. Not given what I'd have to leave. I'm still hammering out the scripts (with more and less enthusiasm), but realizing that perhaps this path that I am on is a good one for me.
Not that this feels like a path. In _Sacred Journey_, Buechner tells the story of his life and recounts the whispers of God to him in the most unlikely places. Whispers that he never recognized until much later as having beckoned him toward God. I tell my college freshman when we talk about _The Will of God as a Way of Life_ that I've never experienced the will of God as a path -- or even the clear blazes on trees spaced evenly apart. What always happens to me is that anytime that my to-do list abates enough for me to take stock of where I am, make a decision, decide to follow God, or try to make sense of my life -- that I look around me and I find that I'm at the deepest place imaginable in the woods. Nothing is recognizable. There are no clearings in the distance. But I hear a whisper -- "over here." But by the time I turn around, there's no voice. Maybe even there never was a voice. But *now* there's something about *this* direction which makes a bit of sense so I move...
But to you, reader, this woodsy metaphor seems to offer irational hope. A "feeling of peace" emerging from...what? A confidence which doesn't make sense out of any particular past. It doesn't offer promise about what's come before....
But you weren't lucky enough to have grown up at Treasure Island with me, either.
Every summer, our family pilgrimaged North to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where we wound down a two lane highway to a dirt and gravel road, hewn out of the woods by my grandfather. You didn't feel the surge of endorphins that we all did as we peered through the windshield and through the dense pine forest and strained at the curves in the road, the whole station wagon engulfed by a rollicking chorus of "Around the Corner's the Cabin!" (to the tune of "for he's a jolly good fellow". There -- that's all you needed to sing it -- because there are no other lyrics -- "and now we're almost there" -- sometimes).
But I was lucky enough to spend those two or three weeks every summer in the woods with my father, in a boat fishing together with my brothers, building treehouses, making fires, learning archery, reading novels in hammocks, racing through "treasure hunts" with elaborate clues and absurd feats of strength and will, playing boardgames as the sunset over the bay.
On many days my father would take us into the woods, hatchet in hand, seeking the trails he had blazed in his boyhood. To "blaze" a trail means to leave an oblong chip on a large tree -- these trees spaced a minimum of ten feet from each other. He taught us how to hold the hatchet, how to "read" the moss on the Northern side of the tree, how to line up trees in multiple directions to avoid circling endlessly in the woods. From those days, I remember everything. I remember the light through the trees, I remember the crisp Northern air, I remember the nervous excited sensation that we may be getting lost or we may be finding something extraordinary, i remember the sense of tradition that enveloped us. My father, at my age had walked in these same places, his father before him. We looked together for the next blaze. Some of the trees had fallen. Some fallen prey to the spruce worms in the late 70's. But when we found the blazes, they were so ancient -- yet so clear. They had been there for a thousand years of possibility and looked as old, but they were as clear as if I had stepped through the wardrobe just three days ago myself and en route to Cair Paravel, blazed them myself.
The byproduct of these days? I cannot feel lost in these woods. (In any woods?) I feel a quiet calm confidence in my training. If we need it I can help us to find a way to an edge of the treeline. But for now, lets just look at what's around, I tell my wife when I take her hiking, pathless through these woods. Because I always watch everything with the trained eye hoping for an ancient blaze on a tree -- every uniquely fallen tree, every surprising fungus, every jutting lichen strewn rock marks my sense of place. And these symbols reassure me.
So proceeding at intuition, it turns out, recognizing: "oh yes, *that*!" is less a blind faith in feeling, and more of a recognition of the tradition and history that has made me.
There! There! That mark on that tree! Over there! Is that just a place where an old branch used to be, or could it be a happy accidental call from my father? From my father's father? Despite the trees that have rained down through these eons, the scrubby undergrowth that has risen to meet them, the hopelesly similiar look of so much of this landscpae -- that voices of meaning can emerge? That if I find those voices, I may make something genuine of my own?
that perhhaps -- all of the accidents and compromises and negotiations that got me here *may* yield something of promise?
posted by Redbaerd at 4:17 PM
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