so my friend nick asked a question in his comments to my previous post, making me realize that this blogging thing might be a good idea after all! love the questions, will answer with more questions, maybe never reach an answer, and enjoy the process...
he asked "is there unique purpose for each person (aka vocation in the philosophical sense) or is there general purpose (aka love) for everyone expressed uniquely through the grid of a persons unique style and abilities?"
here's my thought that serves as a foundation: it's a both/and kind of thing (how many of you saw that one comming? ;-) because we are all created in god's image, it is only natural that we have a general purpose, aka love. god is love and as his creatures, we long for it, we look for it, and we want to express it - that we go about it in different ways is another long subject we're not getting into right now.
that love, as nick questions and proposes, is expressed through the uniqueness of every human being. that expression is what i would call vocation. this vocation is not static but ever evolving. this isn't something that you find once in your lifetime and then you have it all "figured out". vocation, like everything else in life, is then a process of self-discovery: as you get to know yourself, you get to know god. as you get to know god, you get to know how he created you to express the love she lavishes on you.
the foundation is love. dynamic vocation flows out of it. it might not be "vocation" as mainstream evangelical christianity refers to. nonetheless, it is vocation.
this is the reality i find myself in. as i try to identify what is the next tangible step in my life, i keep finding out more and more that i'm fully called to be a vessel of his love. my vocation keeps being redefined, but the core of love is non-changing even when my understanding of love is ever-changing.
those are some thoughts... let me know what you think.
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2 comments:
well, miss vivian, first let me affirm my joy in hearing reference to the feminity of God - this really is a progressive conversation! (not that I would have expected otherwise.
so in general I think I would say something similar to what vivian has said. some of this comes from recent personal experience where people have asked me what it feels like to "do what i was meant to do." generally I stumble through the answer until i realize that i don't like the category they've asked me to live in. do i feel, when i wake up each day that i am doing what i was meant to do? not really. do i feel that i am generally in the right direction? sure. and that is what keeps me motivated. perhaps i will find out when i am 60 that i am never happier career-wise as when i am swimming instructor in Aruba (this is highly unlikely given my general tendency toward drowning - but its possible) but there's no way for me to know that now unless i make a sudden and drastic move to aruba!
anyway, further thoughts on this would be good. i can intuitively feel that i am moving generally in the right direction - but are there ways to be more sure?
First of all, I love you so much Viv and Nick... It's fun to get to tell the whole world that. Secondly, all this blogging is revealing what I too will be doing when I finish school next June. Obviously you 2 aren't trying to get the final project for TS 103 done, huh?
Please keep the conversation going because it is a good distraction from all this end of the quarter stuff...
Sara
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