As I reflected on the accomplishments of our graduates, I found myself returning to a theme that has long been important to me: vocation, or calling.
An honors banquet is certainly a celebration of achievement. But it is also a celebration of calling. Achievement looks back and says, Look what you have done. Calling looks forward and asks, Who are you becoming, and how will your life be offered for the good of others?
As graduates prepare to step into what comes next, there are three important questions worth considering: What is vocation? How is vocation related to goals? And how do we discern calling during seasons of change?
One of my favorite definitions of vocation comes from Frederick Buechner, the American Presbyterian minister, novelist, and theologian known for his insights about faith, doubt, and grace:
"There are all different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God rather than of Society, say, or the Super-ego, or Self-Interest.
“By and large a good rule for finding out is this. The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need most to do and (b) that the world most needs to have done.
“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet."
This definition is both beautiful and bracing. It reminds us that vocation is not the same thing as a job title, graduate school acceptance, fellowship, salary, or five-year plan. Those things matter, and we celebrate them. But vocation is deeper. Vocation requires that we know something true about ourselves and that we pay attention to something true about the world.
Calling emerges in the space between these two objects of attention: attention to the gifts, loves, capacities, and holy restlessness within us, and attention to the needs, wounds, possibilities, and hopes of the world around us.
This is why education has never been only about accumulating knowledge. It is also about becoming the kind of person who can attend well—to God, to neighbors, to creation, to communities, to our disciplines, and to the quiet but persistent invitations that often become clear only with time.
That is vocation.
Many of our students are exceptionally good at setting and achieving goals. They know how to identify a target, create a plan, do the work, and keep going when things become difficult.
Goals are good. They help us steward our time and move from idea to action. But goals can also become strangely powerful. They can narrow our field of vision and make us so focused on arriving somewhere that we miss the person right in front of us.
In fact, goals can sometimes distract us from our calling. In the 1973 study, From Jerusalem to Jericho, psychologists John Darley and Daniel Batson demonstrated that, when confronted with a person in need, individuals who were in a hurry because of an immediate goal were less likely to stop and help.
In a particularly entertaining twist, the researchers set up their study to mirror the parable of the Good Samaritan. The subjects in their study were on their way to give a talk in another building on campus. As they walked between two buildings, the subjects would encounter a shabbily dressed person slumped by the side of the road. The study found that subjects in a hurry (with a goal in mind) were more likely to pass by without stopping.
Further, half of the subjects in the study had been given the task of presenting a short talk on the parable of the Good Samaritan and the other half a talk on a non-helping relevant topic. In a surprising irony, the study revealed that the subject of the talk had no significant impact on the likelihood that a participant would stop and assist the person in need.
Individuals were on their way to give a talk about the Good Samaritan, and yet they failed to live out their calling, on the very way to giving a seminar about it. This is a perfect example of how easily our goals can get in the way of our vocation!
That study is humbling because it is not really a study about "other people." It is a study about all of us. It reminds us that goals—even good academic, professional, or service-oriented goals—can sometimes distract us from the calling unfolding right in front of us.
Many graduates leave college with excellent plans: graduate school, professional school, a first job, or a year of service. Those are good things. Pursue them with the virtues of courage and discipline. But do not let the goal become so loud that you can no longer hear the call.
The call may come through a roommate who needs patience, a colleague who needs encouragement, a community that needs advocacy, a workplace that needs integrity, a family member who needs presence, or a stranger whose need interrupts our schedule.
Goals may tell us where we are trying to go. Our attentiveness to vocation teaches us how to travel there faithfully.
One of the challenges of vocation is that both we and the world are constantly changing. A calling that once seemed clear may become less certain. A new calling may begin to emerge.
Anthony Burrow, a professor at Cornell University who studies purpose across the lifespan, has written about the importance of discerning purpose during life's inflection points.
Graduation is one of those moments. It is joyful, but it is also liminal. Students are no longer who they were when they first arrived on campus, and they are not yet fully who they will become. That can feel exciting, disorienting, freeing, and frightening—sometimes all in the same day.
While there is no simple formula for discerning vocation during seasons of change, Burrow identifies several common pathways through which purpose emerges.
Sometimes vocation develops gradually as we discover what we love and what we are gifted to do.
As a high school student, I was curious, and I loved learning. In natural course, I enrolled in a chemistry class and found that I enjoyed it. The more I studied chemistry, the more I wanted to continue. One course led to another, then a lab, another experiment, another opportunity. Eventually, I became a chemist. For a season, that was my vocation.
At other times, vocation is shaped by experiences we never would have chosen.
In January 2021, during the middle of a global pandemic, my then-14-year-old daughter, Anneli, was diagnosed with cancer. To some extent, this impacted the vocation for every member of our family.
One unexpected outcome was the relationship that developed between Anneli and her older brother, Teddy. The two became fast friends. Teddy would take study breaks to drive his sister to Chick-fil-A or Starbucks, simply to encourage her and spend time together.
Both of them also became deeply involved in fundraising for Four Diamonds, a Penn State Health charity that supports pediatric cancer research and family care.
My son—a six-foot-tall cross-country runner who weighed only 120 pounds—enthusiastically participated in the "Mr. Mini-THON Man Pageant" fundraiser, complete with the required and highly entertaining swimsuit competition. Through his efforts, he helped raise thousands of dollars for cancer research.
Years later, both Anneli and Teddy continue to view service as a central part of their vocations.
Sometimes vocation emerges when we are inspired by a vision larger than ourselves.
We can become captivated by another person's sense of purpose, joining them in work that becomes a shared calling. Vocation can be communal as much as it can be individual. We do life together.
One of the most important lessons about vocational inflection points is that they are rarely planned. We do not always decide our calling in advance. More often, we recognize it in hindsight. We realize the class we took, the conversation we had, the hardship we faced, or the unexpected detour quietly became part of our calling long before we understood its significance.
As I think about our graduates—and, honestly, about all of us—I want to offer three invitations for cultivating calling.
Continue asking yourself: What gives me deep gladness? What gifts have I been given? What work brings out my best and most faithful self?
At the same time, ask: What does the world need from me? Where is there hunger, need, injustice, beauty, possibility, or hope that I am being called to meet?
Set goals. Apply for the job. Enter the program. Build the plan. Use the gifts that have brought you to this moment.
But remember that your calling is larger than your next achievement. Do not become so hurried on the way to doing something good that you miss the person God has placed along the road.
In Mark 5, Jesus is on His way to heal Jairus's daughter. It is an urgent and worthy mission. Yet along the way, a woman reaches out and touches His cloak. Jesus stops. He sees her. He speaks to her. He restores her.
Jesus knew where He was going, but He also knew His calling. He healed people along the way.
Know where you are going. But do not miss those holy interruptions along the way.
When you find yourself at an inflection point—and you will—do not assume that uncertainty means failure. Sometimes uncertainty is the very space in which calling is being cultivated. There is not only one single way forward, but many ways through which God's call may come to us.
Cultivating calling requires patience and posture. It requires openness and readiness. Perhaps vocation is not always about finding a calling as much as it is about being found by one.
As I look at our graduates, I celebrate their accomplishments. But even more, I celebrate the lives of purpose, service, wisdom, and love that are still unfolding before them.
May your deep gladness meet the world's deep hunger.
May your goals serve your calling.
And may you have the courage to be present, faithful, and generous at every inflection point ahead.
- Buechner, Frederick. Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC. Harper & Row, 1973. (Source of the quotation, "The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.")
- Darley, John M., and C. Daniel Batson. "From Jerusalem to Jericho: A Study of Situational and Dispositional Variables in Helping Behavior." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 27, no. 1, 1973, pp. 100–108.
- Burrow, Anthony L. Research on purpose development and meaning across the lifespan. Cornell University Department of Psychology.
- The Holy Bible, Mark 5:21–43 (Scripture references).
