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What does it mean to pursue a calling? According to Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, it may mean ambiguity, uncertainty, and even suffering--but that's what makes it worthwhile. Drawing on over thirty years of research and concrete examples from history, fiction, and her own experience, she delves into the inherent complexities around the pursuit of a calling and the lie that meaning in life is as simple as following your bliss. Instead, the path to meaning is rocky and uncertain--and that is exactly what makes it worth following.
List of contents
- Introduction
- Chapter 1: Missed Callings: The Road Not Taken
- Chapter 2: Blocked Callings: A Raisin in the Sun
- Chapter 3: Conflicted Callings: Purity of Heart Is to Will Several Things
- Chapter 4: Fractured Callings: I Do Not Do the Good I Want
- Chapter 5: Unexpected Callings: With Great Power Comes Lots of Work
- Chapter 6: Relinquished Callings: Riding Off into the Sunset?
About the author
Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore is E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Chair and Professor of Religion, Psychology, and Culture, Emerita at Vanderbilt University. She earned her PhD from the University of Chicago and has spent over thirty-five years teaching and writing, her publications spanning eighteen books and over a hundred chapters and articles. She is a Henry Luce III Fellow in Theology and has received numerous awards and grants for the study of teaching and vocation, practical theology, and women and childhood studies.
Summary
What does it mean to pursue a calling? According to Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, it may mean ambiguity, uncertainty, and even suffering--but that's what makes it worthwhile.
The common understanding of calling is often simplistic. You simply need to follow your bliss, or God's will. Miller-McLemore dives into the complex reality of what it means to pursue a calling, challenging the deceptive and destructive idea that a well-lived life is simple, with one perfect career, partner, or summons from God. Instead, she argues, to truly grapple with calling, we must consider how it evolves amid the constraints of life. Callings are often accompanied by loss, regret, failure, impediments, frustration, overload, and conflict, challenges that are an important part of a balanced life.
Grounding her argument in stories from memoirs and biographies, fiction, and the people she has encountered in her thirty years of teaching and research, Miller-McLemore guides the reader through six dilemmas one may face throughout life, from missed or conflicted callings to unexpected or relinquished passions. Each chapter explores the pain and hardships around these complicated experiences and the enhanced insight and vitality that arises from enduring them.
Intertwining faith, philosophy, and pragmatism, Miller-McLemore engages unflinchingly with the ways we find purpose in our lives, and how we make meaning of the search for a calling, no matter how rough the road it leads us down.
Additional text
Miller-McLemore offers frank and realistic accounts of the burdens involved in vocational discernment. Yet, the book is not a recipe for despair, reminding us instead that even in the face of formidable challenges, we can move forward with a (chastened) hope.
