No Calling, No Problem
Sometimes it really just is a paycheck
One of my favorite parts of having lots of jobs is sometimes, they really are just a job.
Having multiple jobs gives me a perspective to understand the competing forces of how we are taught to view our work. To think about your own context, I wonder how you would answer the following:
Do you have a career?
Do you have a vocation?
Is your work a key part of your identity?
All of these questions reflect how you approach work—and let me tell you it’s not universal. To ask in a different way, how do you respond when you hear the saying, “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life”?
For me, I think we end up living a fairly narrow life if all of our life’s meaning is contained in the same activity that also produces a paycheck.
If you are clergy, you may experience pressure to tie up your spiritual life, your finances, and your career in one neat package. I think of the pressure young clergy face in particular as statistics of young pastors leaving the profession are wielded as worst-case scenario stories. I myself am in a program specifically targeted to retaining young clergy in the profession. Would we see this type of job change as such a failure if it weren’t a job that also required lifelong vows? Do we worry about when people switch from working as a barista to an office job?
There is danger in insular religious communities. There is a fine line between a healthy, supportive, tight-knit community and an unhealthy, obsessive, and controlling community. I have seen this manifest as an all-encompassing Christian culture that dictates socializing, entertainment, education, and more. I have also seen what happens when people choose to exit that religious space and find themselves with little left. To tie up your employment with religion can often only add to this harm.
In short, religious jobs can maintain a tight grip. In my life, holding multiple jobs is a way of loosening what can sometimes be an unhealthy hold. I wish for people to have all the meaning they would like in their work. I want work to be fulfilling. But there are times in which our life’s meaning isn’t found in our labor alone.
I like being a pastor. But to say the quiet part loud, I like not being a pastor, too. I like being able to attend a church service and not be working. I like teaching piano to children that have no idea what my day job is. I like being able to be me beyond one singular expression. At the heart of it, isn’t being fully myself what God would want of me?
What I’m reading
I took my time going through the essays in “How to Read Now” by Elaine Castillo. It’s in many ways a book for book people (the academic version of all those romances set in bookshops), but I wouldn’t want anyone to miss out on this funny, sharp book. A highlight was when I reached the works cited section only to discover that it wasn’t a Chicago Style list of books but instead tiny little commentaries on all that had been referenced in the previous essays. For example, see Castillo’s citation here:
Joyce, James. Ulysses. Vintage International, 1990. Honestly, shout-out to my father for believing I could read this at thirteen. Ditto the following four works.
Read this book or buy it for the book nerds in your life for Christmas.
Song of the week
What life looks like
Ohio! In the fall!