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Making
things happen - with integrity. A weekly CyberMemo designed to keep you on task. Monday August 13, 2001 Volume III Number 33 |
FOCUS - The Voice of Vocation
When Pastor Bill agreed to officiate our daughter’s wedding, he smiled as he wrote the date in his calendar. “That’s my birthday,” he said, matter-of-fact.
“Which one?” we asked. Might as well get the detail, we thought.
“Forty.”
Wow. This is a big one, we told him.
“No problem,” he sensed we were concerned that we might be interfering with a milestone day for him and his family. “I can’t think of a better way to celebrate than to be a part of your wedding day,” he told Candy and Jamie.
We all said, “Thanks, Bill.” Ministry sometimes yields that sort of generosity.
I remember forty.
It was a tough one for me. Tougher than fifty. Something about the mortgage, the unyielding cost of my suburban lifestyle, the professional grind, the realities of the high price of the American dream… not just in dollars (though that alone seemed staggering at the time) but the emotional and physical and spiritual strains and stresses, the relentless needs of young children, the pressure to perform, to meet up to expectations which, in retrospect, were primarily imposed by no one other than myself. Just the sound of the number forty, translated into the number of years spent dwelling on planet Earth, makes me weary. I sometimes think the only way we made it through was the annual birthday party among friends, peers who understood the pain of it all, and commiserated with me around the flickering flames of a candled cake.
So Bill, who rarely admits to any kind of debilitating introspection, agreed to perform the wedding on his Birthday.
And at the reception, we all sang a rousing rendition of the fabled Birthday Song.
* * * * * *
She was forty-three years old when she boarded a bus in Montgomery, Alabama on an ordinary Friday. She took her seat towards the rear, just behind the front section, understood by everyone to be reserved for “Whites” that morning, December 1, 1955. Like so many other cold and dreary Alabama mornings, she bid her husband good-bye and headed out to her regular job as a seamstress, via the same old city bus line.
For generations, she, like her parents and grandparents before her, accepted her “station” in life. She was a Negro. That’s what they called people of her race in Montgomery in those days. She was black. Later generations would tone down the label, replacing it with the descriptive “African American.” But on the Montgomery City Bus Lines, “Whites” got preferred seating towards the front. “Blacks” were relegated to the rear. It was the law. Clearly posted to avoid any confusion.
But it wasn’t just the public bus. This segregation applied also to the drinking fountains. And restaurants. And restrooms. And Movie Theater seating. It spilled over into church life, and political life and education, too. Classrooms were segregated. Athletic teams segregated. And when the established law enforcement agencies fell short of applying the full force of existing laws, vigilante groups took over after dark, and in the night leveraged their influence by use of intimidation and terror, unchecked, insuring separation. And subjugation.
From her bedroom window, more than once, she heard the sound of a Klan mob lynching a fellow Negro under some tall oak tree by firelight. Fear was a way of life.
This was not the dream envisioned by the legendary emancipator, Abraham Lincoln.
By most measures, she was an ordinary middle-aged woman working along with her husband to make meager ends meet. But she was also a reader. An activist. A moralist. A Christian.
Her grandparents lived as children in the pre-civil war era. She heard stories first hand of the slavery days, and the awful price this country paid to eradicate the antiquated institution, to exorcise the terrible demon binding so many, a national blight on a freedom loving people. But she also knew that the elimination of slavery did not mean the elimination of prejudice or malice. She and her people lived with both every day.
Her mother was a schoolteacher. From the earliest days of her own recollections, she remembered the books and the hopes and dreams they inspired. She embraced a faith that brought joy and direction and lively community spirit in the neighborhood. She had friends, and they all believed they could make a better life, even though surrounded by hateful prejudices and discrimination that erected barriers and roadblocks against any kind of upward mobility.
She was committed to the improvement of life for her people in Montgomery. During World War II, when many of her friends and neighbors served with distinction in harm’s way overseas, she became a member of the Montgomery Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. For the next twelve years, she served as Secretary.
One day, she attended a meeting of the NAACP. The speaker was compelling, spellbinding. He was the young pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, the son of a well-known preacher in the region. Martin Luther King, Jr. was his name.
When she boarded the bus that Friday December morning in 1955, the bus filled up as usual as it made its way down the boulevard in Montgomery. Some, who are familiar with this story, have heard that she defiantly took a seat in the front section reserved for “Whites.” That’s incorrect. She sat in her normal seat in the “Colored” section at the rear. When the “White” section filled up, a white man stood beside her in the aisle holding the rail. He looked at her with contempt, and said, “Get up.” He wanted her seat.
She shook her head. No.
He hollered, loud enough for the driver to hear, “Get up!”
She refused again.
The driver, sensing conflict, stopped the bus between stops, set the brake, and personally marched down the aisle to let this stubborn woman know that she was breaking the law by refusing to defer to a “white” who, he said, had priority on his bus and if she continued to refuse there would be dire consequences.
She remained firm in her seat.
“You gunna force me to get the police?” he snapped.
She stared forward, motionless.
The frustrated driver walked off the bus, still jammed with bewildered passengers, and soon returned with two uniformed officers who confirmed that the city law was on the side of the driver and the white man insisting on her seat and that she had better move or they would have no choice but to arrest her and charge her with a serious violation of the law.
Rosa Parks, the seamstress and secretary of the local chapter of the NAACP, only nodded, indicating that if they must, go ahead and make the arrest.
So they did.
* * * * * * * *
Parker J. Palmer recently wrote a book for people who take time to think about vocation. One’s calling. This is the notion that career is only a piece of the identity puzzle.
Few of us believe that our profession defines us. Whatever it is we do to exchange time for money for the purpose of accumulating the resources required to keep our bills paid may say a good bit about our skill set and our interests and our abilities. But most of us would say that our work only represents a part of who we are.
And most of us long for a larger sense of our place in the world. We may even find ourselves playing a role that doesn’t really fit us at all. The “job” certainly doesn’t bring satisfaction or a sense of fulfillment. Rather, the daily grind may even contradict what we really would like to say characterizes our life. But we are stuck.
We may need a career. But what we really want is vocation.
Career, according to Palmer, is a subset of vocation. Vocation is a call. There are clear spiritual dimensions to understanding our place in the world at large. It has something to do with the purpose for which we were created.
Palmer’s thesis is this: living up to some external expectation, trying to be something we are expected to be, will never bring the rewards it may even promise. Check out the title of his book: “Let Your Life Speak – Listening for the Voice of Vocation.”
Palmer tells the story of his life as a scholar – a professor at a major University. And then as a sociologist. A writer. A lecturer. In spite of positive reviews, he confesses to a painful emptiness. An intense internal conflict with the demands of the job he worked so hard to attain. He had a position, but he still had not found his vocation. The more he looked to others to answer the question of call, the more frustrated be became.
Now, after decades of searching, he tells about a lesson learned. He needed to take time to listen to his own spirit, telling him about his values and convictions and the work that brought him the greatest satisfaction and fulfillment.
The voice of vocation within.
He said he needed a Rosa Parks moment.
* * * * * * *
Arrests like these were fairly common in
Montgomery, Alabama in the Fifties. Racial
tension simmered in the humid summer dog days of the South, and then carried
over to this Christmas season in 1955. But
there was something unique about this arrest.
Rosa Parks was not a defiant woman demanding a seat in the forbidden
“white” seats on the bus. She
took her “proper” seat, which was demanded of her by a thin lipped, square
jawed “gentleman” with rancor in his heart.
Rosa Parks held her ground.
She had friends. The following day, Reverend Martin Luther King rallied the members of the Montgomery Improvement Association and challenged them to boycott the city bus lines until the Municipal government changed the rules.
Montgomery stood firm behind the blatant discrimination of the public transportation system. But all over the city, African Americans stood with Rev. King and Rosa Parks. Seventy percent of the bus line’s revenues came from the African American community. The boycott seriously reduced income. Rosa’s attorney appealed the citation and the fine levied by Montgomery’s Municipal Courts, and their appeals were denied. This began a process that led all the way to the Supreme Court.
A year later, the highest court in the land ruled in Rosa’s favor. They overturned the conviction, and outlawed racial discrimination in public transit on December 20, 1956. Dr. Martin Luther became a nationally known leader.
The civil rights movement was born.
* * * * * * *
Pastor Bill made a vocation decision, not simply a job decision..
Three years ago, he came to our town with his wife and family. They knew no one. Three years later, the whole town knows them. At age forty, he’s living out his vocation. It’s not just a job. He took a stand.
Ask him what he does.
He’ll say, “I’m a pastor.”
* * * * * * *
Palmer believes that vocation comes from a true sense of self - understanding your motivations and sensitivities and perspectives. It comes from being possessed by that person you were made to be. It takes time, and work. And a social context where your unique abilities contribute meaningfully to the world around you.
No one, including Rosa, quite knows what caused her to be so entirely possessed by courage that Friday morning on a city bus in Montgomery. But it was at that moment all of her life experience, all she cared about, all she represented… it all came together in what some erroneously called an uppity act of defiance. Others describe it more accurately as a moment of destiny. Vocation. Call.
The whole world changed.
* * * * * * *
It’s Monday morning. You are a leader.
You are beginning again, today, after a good weekend, just like you have on many Mondays before. It may seem that you are hopelessly caught in a routine that fails to showcase all you’ve worked to become. Rather than building towards real fulfillment, it seems like it’s all working against your becoming whole.
Take some time to listen to the voice of vocation. You are not where you are by accident. There’s a larger purpose. A larger calling. That paycheck you’ll bank as a result of today’s efforts is only a part of your real value. You are worth so very much more.
My friend Pastor Bill sensed it on his fortieth birthday when after a well earned roasting, the conversation turned to words of gratitude and admiration and affirmation as those of us who have watched him grow into his vocation told him… he’s on the right track. His work matters. He is a loved man.
Rosa Parks, in a simple moment of conviction, helped a generation begin a process that has encouraged new generations to break the bonds of prejudice and oppression and become more than they ever imagined possible. It was a holy calling. A vocation.
Her work continues.
May her tribe increase. May her legacy live on.
In you.
And in me.
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2001
Special Thanks to my good friend David Belcher, owner of Rhino Media Group and creator of WisdomGram
LeaderFOCUS is a service of Good Stewardship Associates
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