Conception of Vocation Exploration and Spiritual Formation
By Michael Williams, Director, Journey Project

     I conceive of the Christian life as a journey into a state of wholeness and freedom which presumes that our lives are most often marked by brokenness and fear. To the extent that we function out of a center of brokenness and fear, we perpetuate the alienation that exists within the relationships that constitute our lives – the relationships that we have with our own selves, others, creation and God. I understand God’s call to be an invitation to overcome the fear within these relationships and live rather in love. Fear separates, but love binds together and makes connections where there were once divisions. I understand this simply as the process of reconciliation that God is working out in history and of which God is asking each of us to be a part. I intentionally and without apology invite students to be a part of this process and tell them that this is what God is doing in the world. Reflection upon the implications that this reality might hold for our lives, I would call “vocation exploration.” “Spiritual formation” is the process of our life-long attentiveness to God’s intentions for the renewal of the world, and this involves the known and tested practices of the historic and present community of persons who have offered and are offering themselves to God’s purposes. Spiritual discipline ,then, is our mode of careful listening. By listening, we are perhaps, as Thomas Merton noted, able to wait for the word we can not speak to ourselves. Helping others wait for God’s concrete word of invitation or perhaps helping them todiscern God’s “voice” among a multitude of voices is the task of the spiritual director. In this sense, I believe that listening is best done in community or at least in relation to community. I say this because there is the temptation to move conceptions of vocation exploration and spiritual formation into an ethereal realm – a way for the individual to find private personal fulfillment.

     Norman Maclean, in his famous story, A River Runs Through It, discusses some of the things we can learn by picking up a fly rod – primarily that we are by nature a “damn mess.” He points out that without attentiveness to the artistry of fly fishing, even the simplest cast can turn into a jumbled mess at the end of the line. This led the author to state that, “My father was very sure about certain matters pertaining to the universe. To him, all good things – trout as well as eternal salvation – come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easily.” Over the last five years, I have had the opportunity through various Lilly Endowment “Programs for the Theological Exploration of Vocation” (PTEV) to invite hundreds of students to reflect theologically upon their vocations by participating in active-based service programs. This experience, the realities of human history and my own life experience has burnt into my consciousness that just as the simplest cast must be understood as a fruit of grace that comes by art, so too must the simple interactions of human relationships. Our reflections, actions and growth all seem to begin with honest assessments of ourselves; in other words, learning to see ourselves truthfully is the beginning of our transformation. Perhaps nothing helps us do this better than living with others. The more fully we share our lives with others, the more fully we realize the difficulty of the task. We work for the restoration of right relationships among all things, and we find ourselves at a loss, unable to act without causing more harm. This leads to avoidance and paralysis. We disengage from the process. This is what we see all around us – people who have become disengaged – and we call this individualism. It is the fruit of our unwillingness to admit our need of the grace that comes by painful artistry.

     Re-engaging the disengaged, inviting those who know not of the invitation and walking together as we all stumble is both vocation exploration and spiritual formation, and this brings purposeful fulfillment.