College students’ perceptions of calling in work and life: A qualitative analysis

This study examined open-ended responses from 295 college students to questions regarding how they define the construct of calling, how having a calling influences their career development, and the extent to which the term “calling” may apply to areas of life other than work. Results indicated that students perceived a calling as originating from guiding forces, co-occurring with unique fit and well-being, having altruistic features, and extending to multiple life roles. These results largely support recent conceptualizations of calling in the career development literature, and suggest themes to explore in counseling with clients who desire to approach work as a calling.     

Four Fictions and Their Theological Truths

Four novels elicit theological reflection in the college classroom. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver describes justification by grace and the difficulty of living liberated from guilt. The Harry Potter novels by J.K. Rowling prompt tensions between destiny and free choice in determining personal identity. At Home in Mitford by Jan Karon challenges conscientious Christian community to open itself in risk to outsiders. The Red Tent by Anita Diamant retrieves silent women's voices in the Book of Genesis, raising tensions between fiction and biblical authority.     

The Search to Be Real: Why Psychotherapists Become Therapists

This paper argues that one receives the calling to become a therapist to experience feeling real. Stated differently, therapists become therapists to heal themselves. Drawing on object relations theory, the author identifies five wounds therapists may consciously and unconsciously address by entering a therapeutic profession. The wounds are located in the capacity to believe, the capacity to imagine, the capacity for concern, the capacity to be alone, and the capacity of object usage. Achieving these capacities provides the therapist with a sense of wholeness, health, and holiness.     

The Teacher’s Vocation: Ontology of Response

We argue that pedagogic authority relies on love, which is misunderstood if seen as a matter of actions and subjects. Love is based not on finite subjects and objects existing in Euclidean space and linear time, but, rather, on the non-finite ontology, space and time of relations. Loving authority is a matter of calling and vocation, arising from the spontaneous and simultaneous call-and-response of a lively relation. We make this argument through a reading of Buber’s I–You relation and Murdoch’ s account of the responsiveness of ascetic discipline. In presenting this analysis, we draw upon a case study from a research project on Australian teachers and students.     

Family transmission of work affectivity and experiences to children

Theory and research suggest that children develop orientations toward work appreciably influenced by their family members’ own expressed work experiences and emotions. Cross-sectional data from 100 children (53 girls, 47 boys; mean age = 11.1 years) and structural equation modeling were used to assess measures of work affectivity and experiences and to test hypotheses suggesting that family work experiences and emotions influence the orientations children develop toward work and how they in turn influence children’s work and school motivation. Results indicated that the family setting influences children’s perceptions of and future orientation toward the world of work through adults’ expression of positive work experiences, negative work affect, and negative work experiences. Furthermore, children’s work and school motivations appear to be principally influenced by indicators of favorable work affect and experiences. Implications and suggestions for future research are offered that cast the family as an important core setting for children’s vocational development.     

The Freedom of a Teenager: Vocation and Service Learning as the Future of Youth Ministry

Abstract : This article asserts the value of service learning as integral to youth ministry's future. However, service learning often lacks an appropriate philosophical foundation and an effectual process. Therefore, we offer Luther's doctrine of vocation as a framework for engaging youth in service experiences, which in return becomes a concrete way to experience the doctrine of vocation and, more importantly, the freedom of a Christian. Framed and interpreted through a vocational lens, service experiences aid youth in recognizing the urgency of a life of faith,     

Vocation for travel. Catholic priestly training in Sri Lanka

ABSTRACT

Catholic priests and advanced seminarians in Sri Lanka often describe their entrance to the seminary as the response to a strong spiritual calling that they could not ignore. Young seminarians offer more ambiguous narratives, where a combination of material anxieties, local cultural traditions and individual aspirations, encourage them to consider joining the clergy. This article examines how seminaries highlight aspects of religious formation where vocational discernment and the authenticity of one's calling are left for later stages of formation. Emphasizing aspects of career mobility, graduate studies overseas and missionary work, seminaries provide an attractive alternative for prospective priests in Sri Lanka. I argue that there is no contradiction between the spiritual dimensions of religious vocation and the material aspirations of seminarians. Although ethical dispositions emerge and replace the mundane impulses that initially attract young men to the seminary, material incentives are never completely eliminated from the vocational map of seminarians.