Alas, to be human is to discover in perpetuity that one is furnished with a hardware system that is equipped with preconditions for successful operation. Beyond the dryness and thinness of such mechanistic metaphor, to be human is to discover that one remains incomplete, discovers no real identity, and has no essential purpose apart from decisive engagement with the complex of other humans as they pursue and encounter the same. And, all this, inside of the order to which we are submitted in the very nature of things.
This ‘life’ is plainly and daily presented to us in the enchanted and awful world—the beautiful and the brutal—in which we emerge from the point of our conception. We are called forth by our environs, our neighbor, our God, our own weakness, and the resources that we steward. We thus live in a state of embodied consciousness in this harrowing spiritual and biological ecosystem that we call life. To be human is to be called by each of these aspects of our existence; it is to have the ever-impending weight of one’s moral agency set down beside the same in others with the demand of choice set squarely upon our shoulders. Along the way in that very quandary, the accrued wisdom of our forebearers—those who bore the terrible weight of existence with courage and conviction—is there to guide us in collaboration with the voice that speaks from within: that of God in our own nature that beckons in the direction of Love and The Good; that which summons us—so often against our immediate wants or appetites—in the direction of only that which can bring more life and more love. Thus, we are wooed into more of what we actually are: human selves, made in the image of a One, Who cannot be divided or fragmented, a One Who are unified in purpose in accordance with Their Vocatio: The Call; a One Who are the very source of all that is good to will and all that is will-to-good.
…one of the most urgent features of our humanity to which to attend is therefore to learn how to listen for the voice of calling; to adopt and appropriate our status as those called as our chief responsibility and as our noblest quest.
This is what it means to be saddled with a vocation or calling and this is what it means to be human. To be human is, in essence, to be called, and to be called is, in essence, human. Herein lies the distinction that we carry among all in the created order and herein lies both our greatest vulnerability and our greatest opportunity. Inside of such a universe as it has been articulated here, one of the most urgent features of our humanity to which to attend is therefore to learn how to listen for the voice of calling; to adopt and appropriate our status as those called as our chief responsibility and as our noblest quest. Nothing short of a chosen cultivation of generative habits¹ in relation to such a responsibility will allow for such an appropriation—it will not and cannot occur by accident and it will not and cannot be fulfilled in us from without. We must consent to such a call if it is to achieve in us what is purposed for us by the Caller. The only way to freedom inside of such a cosmic arrangement is to engage that which calls to us as a matter of our own free-will. Thus, we are destined to one of two ends: either, to perpetual misery in relation to our chosen ignorance of the holy call set before us by the holy One, or to joy—to the fulfillment and relief that becoming ourselves guarantees.²
This entails a recognition of one’s interdependent condition that induces a reliable humility as the basis of understanding for the whole self as one’s identity. Simply put, we emerge as selves as we are guided by two primary others: the enduring face of the other in our midst³ and the divine Other in Whom we live and move and have our being. Within such a framework, love of neighbor and love of God are the signposts alighting the path ahead. Self-aggrandizement, victim narratives, motivations cultivated in outrage, selfish ambitions, and misuse of resources, are all warded off by an understanding of oneself as responsible to Love itself.
Those who have apprenticed themselves to the Caller therefore learn to do what love invites and to refuse what fear demands as a living rubric inside of which the individual sentences and stanzas of the book of their life are discerned.
People who live lives of calling as opposed to lives consisting in coercion and mere construction (‘go out into the world and take life by the horns’) are those who learn how to do what Love invites, both, as their primary aim and as their primary mode of being. Conversely, people who live lives of calling are those who, in addition to learning to do what love invites also learn, as the flip side of life’s coin, to resolutely refuse what fear demands. Calling, as it turns out, if it is true and is thus emanant of the Divine Source, is never issued to us from a fear-based motive but is sent forth from Love. Those who have apprenticed themselves to the Caller therefore learn to do what love invites and to refuse what fear demands as a living rubric inside of which the individual sentences and stanzas of the book of their life are discerned. This becomes both their quest and their ever-emerging capacity. This is what it means to grow in character, to work out one’s salvation with fear and trembling. This is what it means to take up one’s cross and carry it through the bowels of existence, whether the seemingly mundane or the seemingly heroic. When all is said and done, the human soul has an ear that is trained to these tones and tunes in human life.⁴ ⁵
In the true nature of the case, despite whatever programming to the contrary we may have received in our rearing, we are made by Love and for love in these regards. Without such an understanding of the human self, we are left to definitions of our humanity on one of two self-refuting poles: either, we flirt and flounder inside of notions of deep contempt, mistakenly taking the human being to be both inherently flawed from its conception and essentially brutal in its interests⁶ ⁷, or; we adopt an equally damaging view of human nature as essentially complete and as bereft of any need for redemption or transformation. Both views prove themselves untrue in the usual course of our daily experiences and, to the pure of heart, are immediately and demonstrably false. This is true to such an extent that something other than reason is required in order to hold either view with any kind of conviction—something more akin to will or want.
In the former case, displays of such beautiful goodness and sacrifice are amply visible and evident in everything from the common care of parents to children in the most mundane aspects of daily existence, to the selfless and heroic appropriation of life-calling among those who have given themselves wholly into causes greater than themselves⁸ ⁹.
…either, we flirt and flounder inside of notions of deep contempt, mistakenly taking the human being to be both inherently flawed from its conception and essentially brutal in its interests, or; we adopt an equally damaging view of human nature as essentially complete and as bereft of any need for redemption or transformation.
If we are truthful in our assessments about what we really need from others in community, we come to the realization that we appraise and value one another in ultimate senses on no other grounds than these. Just think about the last funeral you attended and how much appearance, status of employment, condition of teeth, net-worth or number of social media ‘followers’ featured in your shared reflections with bereaved others in your midst. The substance and tenor of our reflections in such moments are not merely tropes; they are the very essence of things, revealed if only for a moment in our grief as a state of proper reflection—a state that we are trained to fear over against our Modern preference for distraction and general ease of countenance and context.
Vocational living is a boots-on-the-ground way-of-being that invites my devoted and conscious attention in all the usual spheres of my existence. It is not, thus, reserved for heroes or saints, but it is most definitely how they are made.
Engagement with life in such a manner must take place in the simplest of ways at the very heart of things. It must be present in my interactions with my friends and foes alike and must be recognized in what is most present and practical. Vocational living is a boots-on-the-ground way-of-being that invites my devoted and conscious attention in all the usual spheres of my existence. It is not, thus, reserved for heroes or saints, but it is most definitely how they are made. It is not ‘special’, and neither is it reserved for ‘special’ people, except and insofar as all are regarded alike and are designated as such. Not equal capacity, as DEI mandates would require that we profess—that would require of both the individual and collective that we bear false witness about the true nature of things, which is certainly not what Love would invite of any of us—but equal value in our shared frame as those created by One God with one purpose and one unifying love.
The Christian cannon observes these matters as a fixed telos¹⁰ that accompanies and imbues the whole of material existence with purpose and defiant inner direction; it presents them as a final cause intended and foretold as a chord of promise running through the chain-link that comprises the many moments—both the magnanimous and the mundane—that comprise our human history. This occurs, as does the entire sweep of the scriptures, at two levels that relate to our purposes here: the first is what we might think of as the micro-level and the second, the macro.
In the first case, we get a glimpse (paradoxically, perhaps) of the essence of our human purpose on the ground as it were—at the heart of what it means to be an individual. The paradox reveals itself as a familiar one in the lives of adherents to Judeo-Christian faith: we are told in the end what is meant from the start. In the case of the current discussion, we read in the final book of the Bible, something remarkable; we receive in the truest sense, a Revelation that sets the terms for individual human existence and fulfillment. In the second chapter of St. John’s apocalyptic vision is it written, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, to him I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, and a new name written on the stone which no one knows but he who receives it.”¹¹ Woven into this verse are the echoes of calling that resound throughout the entire Cannon as they relate to being named and as they relate to what it means to bear out an identity that is conferred and received rather than one that is constructed and contrived.
“…which no one knows but he who receives it.”
The matter of naming is here presented in the intimate terms of relational knowledge. It is revealed as both a birthright and a responsibility, as a lighthouse for the Self as it navigates life’s journey through the open seas of daily existence.
The true name is one which expresses the character, the nature, the meaning of the person who bears it. It is the man’s own symbol—his soul’s picture, in a word—the sign which belongs to him and to no one else.
The great Scottish author, poet and minister, George MacDonald, expounded upon this passage in this way:
The giving of the white stone with the new name is the communication of what God thinks about the man to the man. It is the divine judgment, the solemn holy doom of the righteous man, the “Come, thou blessed,” spoken to the individual…. The true name is one which expresses the character, the nature, the meaning of the person who bears it. It is the man’s own symbol—his soul’s picture, in a word—the sign which belongs to him and to no one else.
Who can give a man this, his own name? God alone.
For no one but God sees what the man is…. It is only when the man has become his name that God gives him the stone with the name upon it, for then first can he understand what his name signifies. It is the blossom, the perfection, the completeness, that determines the name: and God foresees that from the first because He made it so: but the tree of the soul, before its blossom comes, cannot understand what blossom it is to bear and could not know what the word meant, which, in representing its own unarrived completeness, named itself. Such a name cannot be given until the man is the name. God’s name for a man must be the expression of His own idea of the man, that being whom He had in His thought when he began to make the child, and whom He kept in His thought through the long process of creation that went to realize the idea.
To tell the name is to seal the success—to say “In thee also I am well pleased.”¹²
I would invite a summing up of McDonald’s remarkable poetic expression in but one sentence: “You are God’s good idea.”
As it turns out, so is your neighbor. Christ’s crucifixion and the beautiful life that led to it—a life so perfectly lived that singular, exemplarily and thus, cosmic status is owed to his particular crucifixion and his alone—tells us nothing and achieves nothing if it is not for everyone and for everything. Thus, we are each beset with the task of becoming ourselves in an ocean of grace, of one day receiving the name that only we can bear and only we can know in that by which intimacy is defined and in that in which intimacy is fully experienced: that which exists within the relationship that is the Godhead and that between God and His most beloved of creation: humankind and the individual women and men who comprise it.
“What [we, who heed the voice of calling], and God, get out of [our] lifetime is chiefly the person [we] become. And that is why [our] real life is so important."
– Dallas Willard
Dallas Willard said it very well while reflecting on the sum of the dynamic between God and man in the midst of the consciousness we carry as our human condition:
“The apprentices of Jesus are primarily occupied with the positive good that can be done during their days ‘under the sun’ and the positive strengths and virtues that they develop in themselves as they grow toward ‘the kingdom prepared for them from the foundations of the world’ (Matt. 25:34). What they, and God, get out of their lifetime is chiefly the person they become. And that is why their real life is so important.”¹³ (Italics added)
You, my friend, are God’s good idea. May you take this truth with you into all your hopes and aspirations. And may you be deeply met there, by the grace that sustains us both.
Grace, peace and love to you, my friend.
Footnotes
¹ “Generative habits” as understood in the classical tradition of virtue ethics.
² Cf. John 10:10; Romans 8:1–11.
³ Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity.
⁴ Cf. Matthew 11:15.
⁵ Cf. Revelation 2:17.
⁶ Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan.
⁷ Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.
⁸ Cf. Matthew 25:35–40.
⁹ Cf. John 15:13.
¹⁰ Telos: an ultimate aim or end.
¹¹ Revelation 2:17.
¹² George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons, Series I.
¹³ Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy.
