Note: This transcript is autogenerated and does contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.
Amy Julia (00:04)
I’m Amy Julia Becker and this is Reimagining the Good Life, a podcast about challenging the assumptions about what makes life good, proclaiming the inherent belovedness of every human being, and envisioning a world of belonging where everyone matters. Today I’m talking with Karen Swallow-Pryor, the 2025-26 Carlson Scholar at Bethel Seminary. Karen is in addition to being a scholar and professor.
a popular writer and speaker, a contributing writer for The Dispatch, a columnist for Religion News Service, and the author of many books. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Vox, The Washington Post, Christianity Today, etc., etc. And her most recent book is You Have a Calling, Finding Your Vocation in the True, Good and Beautiful. Today, I’m talking to Karen about that book and we are exploring questions like what is your calling? How do you discern it in the different seasons of life?
What does it have to do with living the good life? I’m really excited to have this conversation and for you to join us. But before I turn to that, I want to mention two other ways that you can connect with me. One is a new podcast called Take the Next Step. I’m producing this podcast in partnership with Hope Heals, and it offers conversations for families experiencing disability. We’ll put a link in the show notes so you can follow along if you want to learn more about how to take the next step towards a good future with your family.
If you are interested in the topics Karen and I talk about today, my weekly Substack newsletter explores what a good life really looks like for individuals, families and society. Over there, I write about all these things through the lens of disability, faith and culture. And I share books, podcasts, movies and all sorts of things that I’m loving. So sign up today. Join the conversation. I will share a link in the show notes. And here is my conversation.
with Karen Swallow Pryor. Karen, I am so glad to be sitting here with you today. Thank you for joining us.
Karen (02:09)
It’s great to talk with you, Amy Julia.
Amy Julia (02:11)
So you recently wrote a book and it’s called You Have a Calling, Finding Your Vocation in the True, Good and Beautiful. And I thought we’d start with asking, what prompted you to write this book? Who is it for? What is it? Yeah, where did it come from within you?
Karen (02:26)
Well, the immediate prompt for the book was a talk I was asked to give on being called to be creative at a creativity ⁓ conference. ⁓ So I gave this talk and I really liked it and the people seemed to like it. ⁓ And coincidentally, I was shortly thereafter facing a transition in my own calling in life. ⁓
And so that became part of it. But really, I’ve been talking about these things for 25 years in the college classroom ⁓ as an English professor or any kind of professor, really, especially within an environment of Christian education. ⁓ You’re talking with students all the time about why they’re there, what they’re doing, big life questions. And so I’ve had lots of conversations over the years as an educator.
⁓ with younger people about work, vocation, calling. ⁓ And the older I was getting and facing some of those questions myself and talking to older people and seeing the kinds of shifts and transitions and even backward looking questions and even regrets that they might have, I just realized, you know, I mean, there are hundreds of books out there on calling. I had to read half of them for this book. So it’s an important topic. A lot has been written about it, but
We are in a particular moment, I think, where we are transitioning from some of the assumptions from even just a few decades or generations ago about calling and work and vocation into something new. And there’s a lot of anxiety and fear and even ⁓ disappointment that people are facing that I think is really ⁓ unnecessary ⁓ if we have what I hope is a more correct and thorough
and human understanding of what calling is.
Amy Julia (04:25)
So I love what you said just about those two different, almost different generations who might be exploring the question of calling. You’ve worked with college students for many years, and that seems like the obvious time. I remember when I was in college, people giving me books about what color is your parachute? Who are you? Ask these big questions. And then I very much fall into that second category also of in my probably late 30s, early 40s being like, wait a second.
Who am I? What am I doing with my life? I didn’t realize I’ve closed so many doors that I didn’t realize were closed until around now. And so I think it’s just an important thing to underline that sense that this book and this question is perennial. Like it’s going to come up at different times for different reasons throughout our lives. And I love that idea that maybe there are ⁓ some ways to. ⁓
I fend off but like not need to go to the anxious places, but actually to explore and ask questions. I’m actually on the first couple of pages, I wanted to mention some of the questions that you write. It just begins with all these questions that I have certainly, some of which I’ve thought myself, I’m gonna read a few of them. These are the ones I underlined. What if your calling is something no one sees? What if your calling takes different forms over the course of your life? What if your calling is not an activity, but a place?
So I loved those questions, but I also thought maybe they would help us into a question about ⁓ our common misunderstandings around the idea of calling. Can you just speak to that? Like, what are some of the ways we understand calling?
Karen (05:58)
Yeah,
so ⁓ many are the ways, but I think those ways are again, very particular to this moment in history. you know, I love to give broad context. So, so indulge me while I give a few thousand years worth of context for these questions. But, you know, in our moment in history, particularly in Western culture, ⁓ in the modern age,
we are living in the last few decades, not even centuries of a time when we have had so much freedom of choice. We weren’t just assumed and locked into whatever calling or vocation our parents were or whatever our sex determines for us or whatever our geographical location determines for us. mean, that was the case for almost all of the human beings who lived before us.
And for only about a century or so, maybe two, but not even, have people been able to say, hey, I’m going to move or hey, I’m going to do something other than what my mother and my father and my other ancestors did. And so there’s a lot of freedom there. And it’s been exciting and exhilarating, but also ⁓ there’s a lot of anxiety and responsibility that comes when we’re making decisions because we have the agency to do that.
And so in the past few decades that has really accelerated. And so some of the assumptions that younger people and older people, because we all live in sort of the same media environment, get a lot of the same messages. ⁓ One big misunderstanding is that if you pursue your passion, you’ll never work a day in your life.
follow your dreams and you’ll get a lot of money for doing it because you’ll be doing what you love. And these are messages that have somehow been communicated, especially to younger generations. But also I have spoken to those in the midlife and after midlife who are now looking back and saying, wait, I didn’t do that. I don’t love what I do. I’m not getting paid a lot of money. My work isn’t even paid. Did I do something wrong?
No, no one did anything wrong just because they’re either not getting paid or not getting paid a lot or didn’t pursue the thing that they’re most passionate about because they had other callings in their lives. So this is a very particular moment in history that I was writing to where these are the myths that have fueled us and also I think ⁓ cultivated that frustration and disappointment that we have when we didn’t live up to this false dream that was set before us by our culture.
Amy Julia (08:51)
And so how do we understand, like, let’s just define calling, right? You’ve mentioned the word vocation. Are they the same thing? Like, we just make sure we know what it is that we’re talking about.
Karen (09:03)
Well, just like the word modern, these words can have different meanings and different contexts. So I use vocation and calling interchangeably throughout the book because they all come from the idea, they come from the same word that means to vocalize or to call and they mean the same thing. So a calling or vocation is something that we are called by someone else to do.
So it’s something external. Now it could be like a job, like we filled out an application and we got the call and that’s our job. ⁓ That’s not necessarily that particular job isn’t something that may be or turn into our calling or vocation and it could, but a calling or ⁓ vocation is a role that we have in life that may be something that we leaned into or ⁓
pursued, but it could be something that just is just part of our circumstances, part of our contingency. Vocation calling, this is another myth, is we don’t have just one vocation or calling. We have many and they include the relationships that we have with our family. We are called into a family which makes us a mother or a daughter or a son or a sister or brother. We are called to be neighbors. We are called to be citizens.
These are all callings. then sometimes the work that we do for pay can be more than that. It can be a calling that we have that is a significant role for us to fulfill in life. Or sometimes it can be just the role that we’re fulfilling through our work can be that we get a paycheck to bring home to take care of the family that we’re called to serve.
And so I do spend, but there’s overlap. ⁓ And I think the Protestant theology that I draw on that are, know, are again, our most of our modern world has drawn on is that understanding that vocation is not just something as it was used in the medieval times that’s in the church. So for Christians, talk, there’s a special resonance we have for the word vocation.
that comes from the time when a vocation meant a calling by God to serve in the church, like a nun or a priest or cleric of some kind. And then those who worked outside the church didn’t have vocation. But Luther and other Protestant reformers, and then of course later the Counter-Reformation came along and acknowledged that no, God can call us and our neighbors can call us.
Amy Julia (11:38)
Thanks.
Karen (11:51)
to do a variety of things. It doesn’t matter whether it’s in the church or out of the church. ⁓ The farmer, the truck driver, the baker, the mother, all of these are callings that are used to serve our neighbors and there is no sacred or secular calling.
Amy Julia (12:11)
Well, and this is somewhat a, I guess, furthering of what you just said. This is a quote from the book. Vocation is not about being able to fulfill our desires, pursue our passions or follow our bliss. Vocation is about being called by others to serve. And so you’ve mentioned the serving part a little bit already, and I don’t think you just mean like we all should go work for nonprofits.
But there is also somewhat like maybe like a relational sense to calling both in terms of I mean you and this is comes up in the book as well like literally other people are often the ones who will call you and that may be on the phone like an actual physical, you know, like what we now think of as a call or it may be simply by asking you and paying attention to the things that you’re asked to do. But can you speak about that like kind of relational aspect of calling both in being called by others and the to serve like to do something for others?
Karen (13:06)
Yeah, yeah. And so maybe I need to also flesh out this doctrine of vocation that I was talking about because it is a theological understanding of work and its meaning and purpose for ourselves, but also for the way that God has designed the world and the way the world operates. And so it essentially says the doctrine of vocation teaches that God uses our work to serve our neighbor. ⁓
If you believe in God, then whatever kind of God you believe in probably is a God who can do anything he wants to do. He could have designed the world to be any way, could have provided food like manna from heaven on the ground every day. He could have done any number of ways to sustain this world that is created. for whatever reason, part of how he created this world and created human beings is that we have to work to serve one another.
We have to work to keep ourselves alive. We have to work and then we can do different kinds of work that keeps other people alive and one person can do this thing, another person can do another thing. ⁓ And so all of our work in that way is designed to serve our neighbors. And I am certainly not saying that we should not and cannot be happy and blissful and fulfilled in our work. That is the ideal and that’s what we should ⁓ strive for.
But if we understand that the first purpose is to serve our neighbors, to serve our families, to serve our family, you know, ⁓ the rest of the world ⁓ through our work, then that alone is already a start on being fulfilled and happy and to understand that we’re doing something so important. And then as we grow and develop and, you know, we get better at things, then we’re more likely to get called
to do that thing that we’re good at because we love it and because we have skills to do it. And that’s not always the case. And I think that’s why the foundation is so important. If we understand what the purpose of work is and why we’re called to work and do different varieties of work, then we can actually find fulfillment ⁓ in that. And that can become our calling or our vocation through that process.
Amy Julia (15:27)
So I’m curious how this intersects because you have another ⁓ statement about the midpoint of the book, ⁓ pursuing truth, goodness, and beauty is your calling. And so let’s weave that in, right? Because you’ve talked almost practically, like in kind of practical terms, about like, you might get a phone call and then you go and you learn this thing and you become good at it. But like truth, goodness, and beauty.
often don’t seem practical. seem very like abstract and beautiful and good. But also like, wait, what do mean? How do these things go together? ⁓ What is pursuing truth, goodness and beauty? And how is that our calling in like some general statement about humanity?
Karen (16:05)
Right. Well, because the calling has been so elevated and mystified and sacralized again, ironically, in so much of, our understanding of it. ⁓ I really wanted to kind of begin with the practicalities as I did, but on the other hand, ⁓ you know, calling really is important. We are as human beings created to be called by others and by God and by.
you know, by the things, the gifts that we have, we are called ⁓ to use our gifts and use our passions. ⁓ But it doesn’t always turn out to be the way we envision or it seems very mysterious and very fraught. ⁓ And so I’m actually trying to break it down even a little bit more by saying, ⁓ well, we may not know what our real calling is and we may not know if we’re
we’re fulfilling that calling because that can be a hard, hard, impossible question to answer. But I do know that we are created to pursue the true, the good and the beautiful ⁓ in all that we do. And so my thesis, and I want to talk about each of those a little bit, but my basic thesis is that if we are pursuing the true, the good and the beautiful.
We are fulfilling our calling already and we will, as we are doing that, be able to see and understand what our calling is and what our calling isn’t as well, because that’s important too.
Amy Julia (17:42)
So why don’t you do a little dive into truth, goodness and beauty? What are we talking about here?
Karen (17:48)
Yeah. And so I start with ⁓ truth because in many ways, truth is kind of the easiest. Like everyone can, you know, acknowledge ⁓ at least, you know, cognizant that we should pursue what’s true and not what’s false. And everyone wants to be a truthful person and ⁓ know the truth rather than lies. And that’s what we think of when we think of truth. But applying that to our work and to calling
⁓ means a few practical things, actually. means, ⁓ you know, we might have, and again, I’m writing in a particular. Cultural context in which we are given lots of visions and pictures and images of what things should look like. ⁓ you know, women’s bodies are one example outside of this conversation. That’s a good, a good one to think about how we’re given so many realistic ideas of what that, what
women’s bodies are supposed to be like and look like. ⁓ But work related things are also subject to these kinds of idealized visions. so because of social media, might, or streaming television shows, we might have this image of, ⁓ I remember one time, this goes back many years, a student who is very smart academically and had some academic ⁓ goals. And she told me that she and her husband,
⁓ dreamed of they wanted to become goat farmers. And I was like, why do you want to be goat farmers? Have you ever lived on a farm or know anything about goats? And no, no, but this is what they wanted to do. This was years ago, they do have not done that. But it was like, so somewhere someone planted this romantic image of being goat farmers.
⁓ in her head and and some we the world needs goat farmers and And I’m not discouraging anyone from becoming a goat farmer But it was an example of just something very random that had been planted as an image or ideal that wasn’t really based in the truth of or the reality of who this person was what her experiences and abilities were ⁓ and so knowing pursuing the true means find out
you know, you need to know what the real nature of the work is. And then you need to know yourself, like, can you do can you fulfill what the nature of this work is? And that goes beyond work, it goes, you know, it can be ways of, you know, serving in community or church, like we may have this idea, like, ⁓ I want to stand on front in the front of the stage and sing every Sunday. And, well, you know,
You may not be called to do that. You may not be good at it. You may wish that you were. ⁓ We have to know the truth about, again, the nature of the work and ⁓ ourselves. And there are lots of other ways that truth plays into these questions. But I think because there’s so many distorted pictures of everything out in the world today, that part of the book for me was to say, let’s get beyond those distortions and romanticized images.
and really understand what the nature of reality is, the work, the world, ourselves, and then also the need. Like I might really wish to be a goat farmer, but where I live and in my time and place, there may not be much of a need for it. Sometimes it’s the reality of the world around us and the marketplace, and ⁓ that means that there just isn’t a demand for the thing that I wanna do. I know as writers, Amy Julia,
We know that, right?
Amy Julia (21:27)
Thinking about.
No, it is a really hard thing, actually, to I feel like that is a place of ⁓ discernment for me right now, like in a world that is really not ⁓ reading many books comparatively, ⁓ you know, to even the recent past. ⁓ Do I kind of insist on continuing to put words on paper out there or try to pivot without losing what you were just talking about the truth of who I am?
⁓ in what I have to offer and that I’m very much wrestling in that place as you may be too.
Karen (22:02)
Yeah, yeah. And you know, 30 years ago, a lot more books were needed, right? So it can just be a matter of a few years that makes all the difference in whether our gifts and our abilities ⁓ and the goodness of what we might offer is really needed in the world. We have to face that reality.
Amy Julia (22:24)
We talk about like the true, the good and the beautiful in relation to each other. That was one part of the book I had never thought about before. And I really loved because you really talked about those as being somewhat integral to one another. And I loved that. So if you just. ⁓
Karen (22:41)
Yeah,
sure, sure. And you know, I do, I do have a short chapter where I explain why I’m talking about the true, the good and the beautiful. And there’s a tradition for them. They are considered the transcendentals in classical philosophy. And by the way, for anyone listening who might be passingly familiar with me or might not be, my background is as an English professor. And so for some people have been like, well, why are you writing about a book about vocation and calling?
you know, really, because I love literature and good literature, because it is good and beautiful, I’ll take any excuse to talk about the true good and beautiful. And so these are the subjects that I love, the transcendentals and classical philosophy and classical literature. And so for me, this was, I’m understanding calling and vocation through these things that I’ve always loved and studied. So the transcendentals were considered by, you know, even
pagan pre-Christian philosophers as ⁓ pointing to some, you know, God or eternal cause, whatever word they might have for it, some transcendent being or source that is reflected in our human nature. ⁓ And so we as human beings have, ⁓ we have a moral aspect to our being, which is
what helps us to recognize whether something is good or bad. We have an intellectual and rational aspect so we can recognize whether something is true or false. And we have aesthetic sensibilities such that we can recognize what is beautiful. ⁓ And those things are outside of ourselves, but we are drawn to them merely by being human at whatever level we’re just drawn to them. And so,
You can’t have one without the other because, and this is where the distortion and the fallenness comes in. We have broken understandings of what truth, goodness and beauty are. But in, because they are transcendental and because they have their ultimate source in one source, they can’t really be separated, even though we can think about them separately. So something cannot be beautiful, truly beautiful.
if it’s not also true and good and something cannot be true and not also be good and beautiful. They’re really just three different facets of talking about the ultimate ⁓ nature of our being. ⁓ And if we’re pursuing one, then we really are pursuing the others and just sort of, but we.
It’s like getting a glimpse of a different side of the same thing. If we see something beautiful, then we can look for what’s true and good and vice versa.
Amy Julia (25:41)
Well, and I love also this is something you write. We pursue truth in our thinking. We pursue goodness in our doing. We pursue beauty through our senses and in our feelings. So there’s a sense in which although these are almost different facets of the same thing, but also different facets of who we are, goes out in pursuit of them. And then you wrote to cultivate these abilities is to pursue what the ancient philosophers described as the good life. ⁓ Will you?
talk a little bit about the good life. This is another good life quotation from the book, the good life, the abundant life is your telos, your purpose, your call. yeah, how’s this idea of the good life play in?
Karen (26:19)
Yeah. And, and again, I do draw heavily on, Aristotle, Aristotelian philosophy here, who writes about this. And I think it also, ⁓ he, he really, his ideas conform to, ⁓ my Christian faith. ⁓ but Aristotle would look at anything that exists and say, why does this thing exist? ⁓ it has a purpose, a Taylors, which is, you know, very, you know, even have the idea of having a purpose is, is.
is not assumed in modern and postmodern days today. if, know, so even you could take an object like a hammer or saw and say, why does this exist? And you’d have to know what its purpose is in order to determine whether it’s a good one or not. Like you have to actually know what a hammer is supposed to do before you can know if it’s doing its job well. ⁓ and then therefore a good hammer. The same is true of human beings. So Aristotle looked at human beings and said,
what makes an excellent human being. And an excellent human being ⁓ is one who has virtues like courage and patience and kindness and diligence and there are lots of list of virtues. And so when we demonstrate the excellence of what human beings are and what they were made for, ⁓ that’s the good life according to Aristotle. That is what it means to have the good life. And so
In the book, I’m trying to show that if we are pursuing the things that we were made to pursue, ⁓ we are fulfilling our calling and we will understand it as our calling. this is actually what the good life is, is to do what we were made to do.
Amy Julia (28:06)
How,
I mean, do you have any thoughts on the discerning part of that in terms of how we know that we are doing what we are made to do, especially when, again, we’re in a world of endless choice. We’ve got distorted messages about who we are, about the good, the true, the beautiful. And we might find that pursuing our calling does not result in certainly like the Instagram version of the good life.
Karen (28:35)
Yeah, you know, and one of the things I say at the outset of the book is I don’t have a formula or an easy six step plan. That’s not possible. And a lot of it is framing and understanding. So, for example, in the book, I give a couple of examples of, ⁓ you know, when I was in college, different jobs that I had ⁓ in pursuit of my college and then later education. And those jobs that I had were
assisted me in finding and fulfilling my calling to teach, working in a restaurant, working in a horse farm. But I knew that those were means to an end. But that doesn’t mean that the people that I worked with who committed their lifetime to breeding, training, and showing horses, ⁓ I was doing this, helping them as a job, they were fulfilling a calling. So the same kind of work.
can be just a job for one person, but it can be a calling for another. And that’s just marvelous and wonderful, I think. ⁓ And so I think we, know, sometimes we don’t even know something is our calling until we’re looking back at it. ⁓ You know, I think of my mother who had never had formal ⁓ college education as a teacher that just was mainly a stay at home mom all the years that we were growing up and even beyond.
but she would always, always teach Sunday school, teach vacation Bible school. When she was too elderly and frail to really go out of the house to do that, she would make lessons and mail them to children in India and to family members. she was in her eighties before she looked back and she said, I was a teacher all my life. I was a teacher. I was called to be a teacher, but she just did it.
without thinking of it and then didn’t realize later that this is what she’d been doing all of her life. so we don’t always know and we don’t always know immediately, but sometimes we do. mean, the very first day, ⁓ it was a night school. The first night I taught an English class when I was in my PhD program and I was only ran away into a PhD program because I didn’t want to teach. And then I had my first class and I said,
this is what I was made to do. ⁓ And so I didn’t know until I did know. And ⁓ but it was very accidental or providential. And so again, it’s like all of the mysteries of human life. ⁓ don’t always know immediately or know clearly in the moment. But again, that’s why I described this journey of pursuing the true, the good and the beautiful because when we
When we understand and desire those, we’re going to see everything that we’re doing through the right lens. And we will know the things that we are doing that are true, good and beautiful are part of our calling. And the things that are not true, good and beautiful are not.
Amy Julia (31:39)
I’m thinking within all of that you just said about suffering. And I would say as a friend who has kind of known your life and watched your life for the past, I don’t know, decade, that there’s been some pretty serious suffering that you’ve experienced both physically and emotionally. So maybe for listeners who aren’t aware of what I’m referring to, you could tell a little bit of that story, but also talk about how the experience of humans who suffer actually aligns or perhaps
I don’t know, does that, I think it can confuse our sense of calling. It also maybe can help us discern. So I just wanted to bring suffering into the conversation, but you know, personally, but also in this, in this broader sense.
Karen (32:20)
Yeah, yeah. Well, let me talk about it more broadly first and then maybe ⁓ home in on my personal application. ⁓ notice that true good and beautiful does not say anything about suffering. ⁓ You know, I’ve already alluded to Protestant theology and I’m very Protestant. But, you know, there’s an older tradition and the Catholic Church still, I think, has a better grasp on this, ⁓ on the understanding of ⁓
the centrality of suffering to the Christian faith, the suffering of Christ on the cross, right? In my chapter on passion, which is a big part of how we think about calling, I talk about how the word passion actually means suffering. ⁓ If we have a passion for something, it means we are actually suffering for it or suffering because of it or willing to suffer in order to achieve it.
real passion is suffering. That’s why Christ’s death on the cross is called the Passion of the Christ, because he suffered for us. ⁓ so even in terms of what we would call, what we do consider beautiful, ⁓ beautiful things do not omit suffering. Oftentimes, what is beautiful comes
out of the crux of suffering. ⁓ And so we certainly cannot avoid suffering. I include a lot of ⁓ literature and cultural references in the book ⁓ to sort of flesh these things out. And my favorite ⁓ poem that I include to talk about this is ⁓ by the 17th century poet George Herbert, who was a priest. And his poem, The Caller, The Caller is about wearing the clerical collar.
And the whole poem is him crying out to God about his calling ⁓ because God has called him into the priesthood and he’s doing nothing but suffering in it and not seeing any fruit or reward in it. And by the time he gets to the end of the poem, ⁓ the Lord calls him again, my child. And ⁓
The process of the poem is one in which he accepts this calling, but he laments his disappointment and frustration and pain, and yet it is still his calling and he submits to it. ⁓ so suffering is not absent from the true good and beautiful. It’s not absent from the good life. It’s not absent from our calling. ⁓ The physical pain that I’ve suffered is from
you know, an accident that I had seven years ago getting hit by a bus, ⁓ very much in the midst of my calling. I was actually on my way to meet with an editor at a publisher who wanted to meet with me about one of my books, you know, there’s a bigger story around it, but you know, so it’s very intertwined for me. then the calling that I mentioned, the shift in calling I mentioned at the start of our conversation ⁓ was just kind of being forced to make a choice between
my academic career, which I’d had for over two decades. And really, as I said, it was something I think I was created to do and my own voice and integrity because I was, you know, it was no longer wanted where I was and I had to choose between the two. And so I chose myself and my voice and my integrity and lost my academic career and my, you know, you could say, and I could say I lost that particular calling. ⁓
On the other hand, I’m still called to teach and speak and write and share, teach in different ways. so one particular form of my calling ended. And that’s another central point of the book is that I’ve already mentioned, it’s not just one calling. We have multiple callings over the course of our lives. The callings can change, the form can change. And so, yeah, so I am learning to
take on and fulfill a new calling or at least the old calling in a new way.
Amy Julia (36:36)
Yeah, I like that idea of an old calling being fulfilled in a new way. also like the yeah, the truth that there may be different callings at different seasons. I’m thinking about anyone listening to this and, you know, ⁓ probably for the most part, maybe there are some young people. I would imagine we’ve got more people in kind of our demographic group, middle aged, who might be at a point of, gosh, I don’t know whether I.
Pursued the right calling or maybe it’s a new season. And I’m wondering if there are any, just as we come to the end of this time, like spiritual practices that you might recommend to someone who’s wondering about even just the truth of those opening words of your book, you have a calling. The title of the book, too, you have a calling that there’s a declarative statement there about each and every one of us. How do we ⁓ get kind of. ⁓
pursue that truth in ⁓ the sense of, yeah, I’m thinking about like, what do we actually do to pursue that truth, perhaps from a spiritual perspective? And maybe there are other things you want to say too, I don’t know.
Karen (37:43)
Yeah, I’m a word person and I process things through words and through thought. So those are the kinds of practices I use. And so I’ll just share sort of how I’ve had to teach myself some of the things I say in this book recently, because I have a new calling in my life. I don’t know if I have a word for it, you know, my, lost my mother last year and living in a community with my father.
⁓ and it, you know, ⁓ it’s been very sweet, but there are additional responsibilities that I have to like be company for him and cook for him and just be there for him. ⁓ and those are things I’ve never had to really do before in my life. and it can be, you know, there are times when I get, I do get frustrated and impatient.
I hope I don’t show it, but I do. And there was just a moment the other day when I said, wait a minute, this is my calling. And I just wrote a book about, you know, you don’t have to be passionate about your callings and you may have callings that you don’t want. I, the light just went on for me because I also do say in the book that I’ve been very blessed to, to,
experienced some of the things I say not everyone will experience to have a calling and a job that you’re passionate about and to be paid for it all these things. I acknowledge that. Well, now I’ve just acknowledged the other part. No, I actually have a calling right now that I did not ask for, that is hard for me. ⁓ I’m living out my words. It’s truly a blessing though. don’t want to say it’s just like I’m a terrible cook and I hate cooking and now I’m cooking a lot. It’s just as simple as that. ⁓
Amy Julia (39:31)
I
mean, was early, my children’s early childhood was exactly what you just described. Like I am so grateful I get to do this and ⁓ my gosh, you’ve got to be kidding me that I have.
Karen (39:40)
do this. Let’s affirm what you’re saying. And those are callings. When you had children, you were called to feed them. ⁓ And when my mother died, I had a new calling to be there for my dad in a different way that ⁓ she was able to do before. so sometimes just, and again, this is kind of what my whole book is doing is reframing
thinking about things in a different way or from a different angle. For me, that is a spiritual practice because of how I work. But the other thing that I think is just is more is ⁓ again, it goes back to why I focus so much on the true good and the beautiful is to just to see, you know, again, because because we do have these romantic images and everyone wants to be creative and artistic and significant and what they do and
We are like, if we can see that in what we do every day, the way that if you just, when you are washing and putting away the dishes and creating a little order in your kitchen, you’re making it more beautiful. If you make the bed, you’re making the room more beautiful. you leave the mess and let the mess, if you let the mess stay because you need to sit down and have a conversation with your neighbor who stopped by and that is good. ⁓
Like just seeing the truth, goodness and beauty in the little things that we do every day, whether it’s to take the goodness of time with someone who needs it, to create the little bit of order by doing the housework we might not want to do. ⁓ And by ⁓ taking, by being, doing something truly, by doing it well ⁓ in that moment, whether it’s a small thing or big, ⁓ then we’re
We’re living the good life by pursuing those.
Amy Julia (41:38)
things. That is such a good place to end this conversation. Thank you for bringing us home so well. But ⁓ I really love the that sense of ⁓ as we talked about at the very beginning, there’s like a practical and an abstract aspect to what we’re talking about here. And I think you just brought that together so beautifully that these really practical, everyday aspects of our lives that can feel almost easily meaningless and mundane.
can also be something that we’re able to have eyes to see as ⁓ as a really good, true, beautiful part of a good life. So and of the good life. Thank you for that. Thanks. Yeah. And thank you for your book and for your time. And I’m glad we got to be here together today.
Karen (42:23)
I am as well, thanks Amy Julia.
Amy Julia (42:30)
Thanks as always for listening to this episode of Reimagining the Good Life. I’m really excited for this season. I’ve already got some excellent conversations coming, one with Sharon Hottie Miller on self-forgetfulness, Kelly Kapek on human limitations, and Leah Labresco Sargent on the dignity of dependence.
My weekly newsletter, again, is where I dive deeper into the ideas we talked about today and share books, essays, and more that I’m excited about. And so I will share a link in the show notes. You can subscribe over there. It’s free. And I’m also going to ask you a favor. If you have listened this long, then you might be willing to follow the show, to rate it, to review it, and to share this conversation with other people who might enjoy it and benefit from it.
As always, you can send questions or suggestions my way. In the show notes, there’s a link that you can tap on, the one that says send us a text. You also can email me at amyjuliabeckerwriter at gmail.com. Finally, I want to thank Jake Hansen for editing this podcast and Amber Beery, my social media coordinator for doing everything else to make sure it happens. I hope this conversation helps you to challenge assumptions, proclaim the belovedness of
every human being and envision a world of belonging where everyone matters. Let’s reimagine the good life together.
