Welcome to this final episode of this small series of four tethering understandings for being alive

and walking into the callings of this world now. And the matter of calling of vocation is the subject

this time. I love a line of a poem by the late William Stafford. The poem is titled vocation

and the sentence is your job is to figure out what the world is trying to be.

Now I could make a compelling case that the world right now is doing its best to turn inwards

and hurdle backwards. But this poetry breaks my heart open. The language of vocation is really

important to me and I take it as a pointer for the way forward from here. It comes from the Latin

Vocare calling which is a word we use a lot at on being. In Western culture in the world I was

born into vocation was equated with work and with job title. But we are called not merely to be

professionals but to be friends, neighbors, colleagues, family, citizens, lovers of the world.

We are called to creativity and caring and play and service for which we will never be paid or

never be paid enough but which will make life worth living. In each of us imprints the people in

the world around us, breath to breath and hour to hour as much in who we are and how we are present

as in whatever we do. And just as there are callings for a life there are callings for our time.

Some of us are called to place our bodies before other bodies on the front line of danger.

There are so many front lines of danger in our young century. But there are other quieter callings

that are as necessary to the health of our communal soul and to make the beyond of danger and the

beyond of division more muscular and more real. Some of us are called to be bridge people,

staking out the vast ground in the middle and heart of our life together where there is

meaningful difference but no desire for animosity. Some of us are called to be patient callmers of fear.

This calling is so tender and so urgent if what we truly want is to cook our own best selves

and the best selves of others into the light. There are many ways to analyze the crises and the

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