Entries from May 2009 ↓

In the final throes of a crazy summer, I heard this song.

Reminding me that yes, I may have flubbed it/them again. But I am still loved.

When you wake up each mornin’
And you feel like callin’
I’ll be there for you
When the road seems uncertain
And you can’t stop the hurtin’
I’ll be there for you
When there’s no one beside you
I’ll be there to guide you
Catch you each time you fall
When the stars won’t shine anymore
I’ll be there….

When the world is unkind
And your dreams they need more time
I’ll be there for you
If the rules they keep breakin’
And the future is fadin’
I’ll be there for you
The rainbow will end in the palm of your hand
Don’t ever let it go
When the stars won’t shine anymore
I’ll be there….

(‘ll be there by Martin Nievera)

The Five Love Languages

My primary love language is probably
Quality Time
with a secondary love language being
Words of Affirmation.

Complete set of results

Information

Unhappiness in relationships, according to Dr. Gary Chapman, is often due to the fact that we speak different love languages. Sometimes we don’t understand our partner’s requirements, or even our own. We all have a “love tank” that needs to be filled in order for us to express love to others, but there are different means by which our tank can be filled, and there are different ways that we can express love to others.

Take the quiz

and I solemnly promise that I will never do this again. Not willingly.

It’s just beginning to sink in how much I’ve put myself through the past two months… If it weren’t so much fun…

March 29-April 2: 1st sem finals week

April 3- 10: Cagayan Valley college camp in Tuguegarao

April 14: first day of summer classes for MA

April 16: first day of new job

April 25-26: Vision setting for PCCI

April 30 – May 2: Ifugao high school camp in Lagawe

NOW: finals week

I’m grateful that I’m still healthy, alive, sane and breathing. I think.

Thank You for keeping me safe even when I would fall asleep during bus, taxi and MRT rides.

Thank you for telling me not to walk too quickly.

Thank You for letting me experience traveling from km 48 to km480 of Luzon.

Thank you for waking me up at 3am, 7am, whenever and “listening” to me whine through ym.

Thank You for helping me catch a flying tent, catching me when I slipped down those steps, and helping me catch a vision.

Thank you, you and you for watching Star Trek with me.

Thank You for the one hundred new people I met this month.

Thank you all for being patient with my erratic attendance.

Thank You for reminding me that I was not meant to be comfortable at all.

Thank you for showing me how to savor a moment: arms wide open, face to the sky.

Thank You for letting me serve and bringing me to a community where I can do so passionately.

Thank you for being my support group in this finals week madness.

Thank You for showing me why I chose You have chosen me for this path.

Thank you for giving me a reason to stay.

Thank You for making me lie down, leading me, and restoring me.

What is Calling?

Historians like stories. I’ll begin with two.

The first is how I came to be speaking this afternoon, which actually goes back to an encounter I had with a student three decades ago. The setting was my first tenure-track position. I was in my office the week before the start of classes, feeling a little overwhelmed about new preparations while trying to stay up with my scholarship. I knew I didn’t have time for anything else besides family and church. Then into my office walks this student, a soccer player, who introduces himself as Greg Baker and who tells me he’s the president of something called InterVarsity Christian Fellowship—which I don’t think I’d ever heard of before. He then informs me that his group’s faculty adviser is on sabbatical for the year, and the executive of IV has decided that I should take her place. Long story short, that request led to a terrific partnership with IVCF. Greg, by the way, went on InterVarsity staff at the University of Delaware, where he continues to serve faithfully.

The second story is about an Iowa farmer, a believer who grew up on land that his family had farmed for several generations. Unlike the first story, in this case it was a web of relationships and local experience that was the agent of his calling. And then one day when he was out in the cornfield on his John Deere tractor the young farmer gets a call on his cell phone. There’s this guy who wants to talk with him. The guy turns out to be in ministry, what in biblical times would have been called a prophet. Today perhaps think of a Billy Graham or a John Piper. And the visitor tells the young farmer that he’s heard from God that it’s nearing time to wind up his ministry and that God wants the younger man to take his place. And so, the visitor takes off his coat with the name of the ministry emblazoned on it, and puts it on the farmer. And then the truly remarkable part of this story: the young farmer said to the visitor, “I need to tell my family that I’m going to accept this call.” He then called his banker and asked that the tractor be applied to his line of credit, he went to the local butcher and bought all the ribs that were available, and he put together a barbecue for family, neighbors and friends and then—he left—forever.

At some point you realized that this second story was in fact Elijah’s call to Elisha in 1 Kings 19. But if I had read a biblical passage so well known, you may not have appreciated its strangeness.

Extracting a fixed set of principles about calling from the two stories is even more difficult when placed alongside what we just heard from our panel. This makes calling hard to reduce to a simple pattern. So, I want to approach our question, “What is Calling?,” from several angles.

I’ve been interested in the topic of calling for a decade plus, arising out of that expansion of my own calling when I was 50:

• I teach a course, Exploring Faith and Calling, in Hope College’s senior seminar program
• One of my current book projects, Believers: Minds at Work, includes chapters on the calling of modern British figures such as William Wilberforce, G. K. Chesterton, Florence Nightingale, Michael Faraday, and Dorothy Sayers

Some Characterizations of Calling

One response to the question, “What is calling,” is asking others who have thought about the topic to define it. See if any of these characterizations make sense to you:

• God’s personal invitation for me to work on His agenda using the talents I’ve been given in ways that are eternally significant. (Thomas Addington and Stephen Graves, A Case for Calling)

• Calling is the truth that God calls us to himself so decisively that everything we are, everything we do, and everything we have is invested with a special devotion and dynamism lived out as a response to his summons and service. (Os Guinness, The Call)

• A God-given purpose to use one’s time, energy, and abilities to serve God in the world. (Jerry Sittser, Discovering God’s Will)

• “The work that [a person] is called to do in this world, the thing that he is summoned to spend his life doing. … We can speak of a man choosing his vocation, but perhaps it is at least as accurate to speak of a vocation’s choosing the man, of a call’s being given and a man’s hearing it, or not hearing it.” (Frederick Buechner, “The Calling of Voices”)

• “Every individual’s sphere of life, therefore, is a post assigned him by the Lord that he may not wander about in uncertainty all the days of his life … Our present life, therefore, will be best regulated if we always keep our calling in mind.” (John Calvin).

Here’s a summary: calling comes from God, includes gifting (which might looking backwards seem more like experience or habit), a job/career/post/thing, and certainty—supernatural certainty.

But answering the question, “What is Calling?” is also to recognize the different types of calling. All believers share a primary calling: to God in Christ. I experienced that when I was 25, a few weeks after I had passed the comprehensive exams for my Ph. D program. I had grown up in a non-believing family, completely outside the church. I wasn’t seeking salvation—I had no sense I needed it—much less a pass on the hell thing—I didn’t believe in that either. But I was challenged—in a winsome way—by an undergraduate student to read the Bible, and over many months I encountered such profound truths that I was, simply, overwhelmed—like being swept away by one of those big waves on a beach in southern California.

While all believers share this primary calling, each has a particular secondary calling, probably that job/career/post/thing. To see the relationship between primary and secondary callings, it’s helpful to ponder the two greatest commandments (Mark 12:28-31). Like them, the primary and secondary callings complement each other; as well, their order is significant. The first encourages us to love God in our relationship with Him; following from this, the second encourages us to love our neighbors. As our neighbors are all different, what our secondary calling is and how each of us does it is going to be different. Your secondary calling won’t look like mine because it was never meant to. Of all people, mature Christ-followers should be well beyond “calling envy.”

So, given what God is up to in our world, He has chosen to work through humans—including plenty who are not believers.

• Healing through health care practitioners
• Civil authority through politicians
• Psychological peace through counselors
• Thinking—that’s what professors do and help students do. But this call to thinking will take very different forms—because form follows fitting, or calling.

What Calling Is Not

Answering the question, “What is Calling?” is also to realize what calling is not. Consider two metaphors.

First, calling as a game of hide and seek.

There are sincere people who believe, sincerely, that there’s one right vocation, one thing you’re supposed to do, one perfect mate and no other, one right graduate program or postdoc or academic post, and so on. And God is hiding one or more of these from you. Our job is to discover them, then act on that discovery by appropriating them, and then God will be pleased with us.

Here are just a couple of the problems with this first metaphor.

• Agape: this doesn’t seem like the God of the Bible. Would a God who died on the Cross for us play this sort of game?

• The matter of small things: “Who despises the day of small things?” Zechariah asked (4:10). Or Bonhoeffer in Life Together: “Only he who gives thanks for little things receives the big things.” Our daily choices regarding small things when multiplied culminate in much larger outcomes. Thus, rather than focusing too much on the big question, “am I called to the academy?,” this next semester seek to do well on one paper, or project, or experiment—and then see what happens. Like marriage, rather than obsessing about Miss or Mister Right, would it not be better to work first on becoming a good friend?

As an antidote to the game of hide and seek, ponder: If we’re in the will of God, does whatever we choose become the will of God for our lives?

The second metaphor is calling as a journey.

There are sincere people who go to the other extreme, who believe, sincerely, that it’s all about the journey not the destination. Journey, of course, but journeys are means to an end, not the end. I would have let you down had I not gotten off the train at Millennium Station and made it to the Marriott Hotel, had I not known my destination and thus failed to show up this afternoon.

The main problem: Does not this feed our propensity to hyper-individualism?

As an antidote to calling as a journey, ponder: my calling is not just about me—it’s also about me thinking about you.

So, believers know they have a destination. It’s heaven. The more I conform my life to Jesus the sweeter will be my arrival there. He, Jesus, was the rabbi who added to the Shema loving God with our minds. There are some, among them academics, whose calling is precisely that.

I personally think the most faithful people are the ones who hang in there—in small congregations when the mega-church in town seems so attractive; in businesses, when success eludes; in departments, which may no longer be fun or where one is surrounded by negative colleagues; in marriages which look more like battlefield than bliss; in towns where more stores are closing than opening. These people reveal that supernatural certainty regarding calling. And isn’t that the definition of faith? Not happiness on the mountain top of exaltation, but courage in the valley of despair. I wish I’d follow my own advice more—but that’s another talk.

So, guard against taking these two metaphors to heart because while each contains an element of truth neither is exclusively true. Like some of my students who wish all answers to be, “all of the above,” think about combining the essence of the two metaphors: be a seeker who is having fun on the journey while knowing the destination.

Career and Calling

Answering the question, “What is Calling?” is also to ponder the distinction between vocations, and jobs or careers. I may retire or lose my job, but that doesn’t mean I’ve lost my calling, any more than I might somehow lose my primary calling. The venue may change, or our work may move from paid to voluntary or voluntary to paid. But like changing churches doesn’t affect the first commandment or the primary call, the same is true regarding the secondary calling.

So, four principles for thinking about calling/vocation in relationship to job/career:

• Calling transcends career; not everyone’s calling fits into a specific career
• Calling uses a career, but shouldn’t be reduced to a career, and the career should not get in the way of a person discovering or pursuing a calling.
• Calling involves work that can send us in directions where traditional careers do not go.
• Calling is very often not singular but plural.

Consider two cases. The first was my father-in-law. His job was car mechanic, but I would say his calling was to be an evangelist. He did his job so well—and charged so little for the doing of it—that lots of people put up with a presentation of the gospel because they respected Max Smith’s work (cf. 1 Thes. 4:11-12).

Second, there’s the case of Hannah More, one of the subjects for the Believers book (if you saw the 2007 film Amazing Grace you encountered her). More was a quite conventional schoolmaster’s daughter who became by her early 30s a very popular writer—and made a lot of money.

In her late 30s, she had some sort of conversion from a vague Christianity to a personal relationship with Christ. This unleashed her: she wrote a number of important works of social criticism; and she closed down a school for the wealthy she and her sisters operated and opened her first Sunday school for the poor. Within a decade the More sisters were supporting and administering over 16 schools, teaching poor boys and girls to read, learn Christian morals, and acquire skills which would help them in life.

These were not your mother’s Sunday school. In the More sisters’ schools there was a Sunday evening service for parents; Wednesday evenings there were adult classes. Girls were taught household techniques as well as useful skills so they were employable. There were job outplacement services.

It seems to me More’s calling exhibited all four of those principles: calling transcends career; calling shouldn’t be reduced to a career; calling may take us where careers cannot; and calling is often not singular but plural.

The Bible, Community and Calling

Considering “What is Calling?” causes us to ask how, exactly, God calls us to a vocation? Let’s think biblically:

• God calls us directly: Abraham; Paul
• God places a desire in my heart: Isaiah (Here I am; send me)
• God takes people along a path they would not have chosen: Daniel
• God offers an attractive option: Stephen called as one of the seven in Acts 6.

In the case of the latter two, notice the role of others. Very often God uses other people to call us. If you read Paul Anderson’s Professors Who Believe: The Spiritual Journeys of Christian Faculty, 22 personal narratives of living out the faith in the academy, many of our colleagues heard their call through a professor who knew them well.

We may be God’s agent in calling someone—especially to still another type of calling, termed special. This might be for a very brief time, or for part of a career, or alongside a job—or it may transcend everything else we do.

Consider William Wilberforce, another of my subjects in Believers: God used three different men to call Wilberforce: the prime minister, William Pitt, who was a non-believer; John Newton, his spiritual mentor; and John Wesley. In the early 1790s Wesley wrote Wilberforce to encourage the younger man to hang in there in leading the campaign against the slave trade:

Unless God has raised you up . . . I see not how you can go through with your glorious enterprise in opposing that execrable villainy, which is the scandal of religion, of England, and of human nature. Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils; but if God is with you, who can be against you? Oh, be not weary in well-doing. Go on, in the name of God and in the power of his might, till even American slavery, the vilest that ever saw the sun, shall banish away before it. (This was the last letter Wesley ever wrote; 88 years old, he died six days later.)

Another case, closer to home for me was Herbert Butterfield, an eminent early 20th century Cambridge University historian and Methodist lay preacher who had neatly divided his world between the two until he was asked by his university’s divinity faculty to give a series of lectures on Christianity and history. He told his eventual biographer he trembled “at the thought of proclaiming before a university audience what he considered to be the ‘intimacies’ of religion, things he had only uttered previously in the seclusion of Methodist chapels.” Even at age 49 Butterfield was intimidated by the anti-Christian bias of his colleagues. But he accepted, thereby uniting his spiritual and professional worlds, and out of the lectures came a path-breaking book, Christianity and History.

Os Guinness thought after his conversion he should be a pastor. A 10-minute conversation with a service station attendant caused him to understand his work was outside not inside the church, and he became a public intellectual.

So here’s a principle: let someone, besides a parent, know you well. In fact, let several people know you well. Consult them. Turn your face to God; pray really hard; read the Bible deeply. Read Christian writers as well.

And read yourself. Look for these six signs:

• Passion: What motivates me?
• Talent: Understand your gifts, and then seek work that matches them well.
• Life experience: John Bunyan or Alexander Solzhenitsyn in prison.
• Opportunity: is there an open door; but consider closed doors as telling us what we are not supposed to do.
• Community: listen to the voice of others.
• Joy—not happiness; joy. This truck driver’s story can be translated very easily to the academy:

I drove tractor-trailer rigs for several years. It was always interesting to sit in the driver’s lounge and listen to other drivers talk while our trucks were being loaded. Regardless of where I was in the country, the discussion revolved around the following four topics (the language has been sanitized):

1. My dispatcher is incompetent; he’s out to get me and I am out to return the favor.
2. My job does not pay enough.
3. My company always tried to cheat me out of what they owe me.
4. No state trooper ever cuts me enough slack.

It took only five words to render everyone speechless, for a dead silence to descend on stunned drivers holding coffee cups. The words? “I like what I do.” Whenever I uttered those words everyone sort of looked at the floor, cleared their throats, then announced that they needed to go check on when their trucks would be loaded. Conversation, as they knew it, was over.

As Dallas Williard puts it in Divine Conspiracy, “The deepest longings of our heart confirm me in my original calling.”

Conclusion

Finally, calling—because it is so vital—presents us with moral challenges:

First, our work should not drive us: Vocation is not about doing, but being. At the end of Hebrews 11, the chapter on the heroes of the faith, there’s verse 39: “These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised.”

Second, our work should not trump family. Professors’ spouses and children end up as involuntary associate members of the academy. A healthy sense of calling ought to lead to wise choices via good boundaries.

My conclusion will be brief. Vocations, careers, jobs, and work flow from the primary calling. Although our secular-minded friends, family, neighbors wish it were not so, there is no calling without a Caller. But, sisters and brothers, because there is a Caller, you have a calling.

I’ll give the last words to Jesus, which he uttered to that Caller in John 17:4: “I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do.”

Marc Baer has been at Hope College since 1983, where he specializes in modern British history. He is the author of Theatre and Disorder in Late Georgian London, published in 1992 by Oxford University Press. Besides courses in British, Irish and imperial history he also teaches a senior seminar, Exploring Faith and Calling. In addition to his teaching and research Baer helped organize the Hope College Veritas Forum, serves as faculty advisor for the InterVarsity chapter at Hope, and for a dozen years has directed the college’s Pew Society, which through a mentoring program helps equip Hope students to consider and prepare for graduate school and university teaching careers.

From: http://www.intervarsity.org/gfm/esn/resource/what-is-calling

When I close a book
I open life.
I hear
faltering cries
among harbours.
Copper ignots
slide down sand-pits
to Tocopilla.
Night time.
Among the islands
our ocean
throbs with fish,
touches the feet, the thighs,
the chalk ribs
of my country.
The whole of night
clings to its shores, by dawn
it wakes up singing
as if it had excited a guitar.

The ocean’s surge is calling.
The wind
calls me
and Rodriguez calls,
and Jose Antonio–
I got a telegram
from the “Mine” Union
and the one I love
(whose name I won’t let out)
expects me in Bucalemu.

No book has been able
to wrap me in paper,
to fill me up
with typography,
with heavenly imprints
or was ever able
to bind my eyes,
I come out of books to people orchards
with the hoarse family of my song,
to work the burning metals
or to eat smoked beef
by mountain firesides.
I love adventurous
books,
books of forest or snow,
depth or sky
but hate
the spider book
in which thought
has laid poisonous wires
to trap the juvenile
and circling fly.
Book, let me go.
I won’t go clothed
in volumes,
I don’t come out
of collected works,
my poems
have not eaten poems–
they devour
exciting happenings,
feed on rough weather,
and dig their food
out of earth and men.
I’m on my way
with dust in my shoes
free of mythology:
send books back to their shelves,
I’m going down into the streets.
I learned about life
from life itself,
love I learned in a single kiss
and could teach no one anything
except that I have lived
with something in common among men,
when fighting with them,
when saying all their say in my song.

Nurturing Passion as a Community REUNION!

Start:	Jun 5, ’09  630pm
End:	Jun 5, ’09 9pm
Location:	Chowking Pioneer, Mandaluyong

If you know what a passion circle is…
If you have seen Rick and Dick together…
If you can identify the elements of passion…
If you know which pillar you have a burden for…
If you have heard the song “Kay Yahweh Ako”…
If you believe that the Philippines is indeed a chosen land…
If you have a near-frozen-popsicle experience while sleeping in the tents…
Or if you have tasted the bananas, pineapples and halo-halo at Silang…

Then what are you waiting for?

JOIN the NPC Professionals Retreat Batch 1,2 and 3 REUNION!

June 5, 2009 Friday
6:30-9pm
Venue: Chowking Pioneer, Mandaluyong
Reg: TBA for the food.

Please contact Rita to confirm your attendance on or before May 29.

09208119961
0927509196
mricmariano@yahoo.com
www.tarits.com

I’ve been to 3 life-transforming gatherings (camps/retreat) in the past month. And without fail, conversations always end up in one topic: Love life.

What’s with the fascination? Is it the exposure to the raging hormones of almost a hundred teenage campers? Or hormonal imbalance on the part of seemingly mature twenty-something humans, maybe? Has it got something to do with the fact that 90% (or some equally and ludicrously high proportion) of my co-counselors and staff are still single? And most of us from birth, by choice. Seemed like the ants came out in droves not just because of crazy weather but because of the sheer amount of mushiness discussed.

Thank God for older, wiser, more experienced people who willingly and honestly shared their stories. Their insights, encouragement and rebukes definitely helped me put things in perspective. I gained a treasure trove of learnings the past month from overnight and/or stolen conversations about love, life and why I do what I’m doing. And lost a lot of sleep processing all that information in consequence.

In summary, I’ve learned that it is important to:

To make friends and thus make time for them.

To be willing to fall, make mistakes and get back up again.

To be willing to catch instead of abandon others in the circle.

To be in community and not isolated.

To find and be with people with similar / complementary passions.

That there is NO one God’s will…. or dot/tightrope line that I must stay on else I will be doooooommmed!!!

That God gave me a brain and I must use it. And a heart too, likewise.

That theorizing has limits (but I still love doing it because I am an unabashed geek/nerd).

That idealism has its place.

To view time and experiences in segments.

To err on the side of grace.

To end, here is an excerpt from Adaptation, starring Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep & Chris Cooper and directed by Charlie & Donald Kaufman. The script and the following comment was from a KCmate who shall not be named for security reasons ;-P

Charlie: Remember Sarah in High School, when you were flirting with her?

Donald: How can I ever forget, I was so in love with Sarah.

Charlie: But did you know that the moment you’re gone, she and her friends were laughing at you, calling you names?

Donald: I did.

Charlie: But why? You were so happy?

Donald: I loved her so much. That love was mine. It’s for me to own and nothing can snatch it from me, even Sarah. Whom we love makes us what we are not who loves us. I decided that a long time ago.

This can be the perfect motto for unrequited love. Yet from the other angle, I cannot resist to be struck awed by such love a pure. Love given so abundantly and not a kernel of thought spent to expect a response. Love is Donald’s means and end, that Sarah’s refusal tantamount to her loss. There is not a thing wasted for Donald, but celebration in every detail as there is so much happiness to savor in love.

I hope I can be like Donald, no regrets, no expectations only savoring the sweetness of the given. Would you want to be like Donald?

I only have a passing acquaintance with comfort zones. Because once I get comfortable or attached to a certain place, work, set of people, etc., things happen to make me move or get out and start all over again. People move on, opportunities come, doors close, contracts end, semester finishes, and so on. 

It came to a point that I started getting tired of packing up, adjusting, saying goodbye and letting go. There are only a certain amount of things that you can bring with you, a limited number of friends you can stay in touch with, a finite amount of time you can stay active… and letting go of anything is not my favorite thing to do.

But it is only when I get out of my comfort zone that can I experience the best there is. It is only when I give in to my restless spirit and itchy feet that I can follow my original design: to be a pioneer. And it is only when I let go of the old that I can make room for new things: experiences, learnings, successes and friends. I’m willingly being taken out of the comfort zones of mediocrity, apathy or complacency for a passionate life lived to the fullest.

In the first 4 months of 2009:

I overcame my fear of heights and getting injured/sprained… and was able to enjoy the feeling of walking along the Banaue Rice Terraces and being inside an actual cloud. It’s the first time I saw tiny raindrops fall horizontally without any wind, or a river rush madly a hundred meters under my feet.

I am still struggling with my nocturnal nature… so that I can have QT in the morning, go to work, go to school, be on time and be with people.

I am done with being a fulltime student … and back into the corporate life. Investment for my dream job =)

I am learning to stop overcommitting or overbooking my schedule … so that I can have time for deeper friendships.

I am being pushed to rise up from my tendency to avoid physical exertion… into a schedule of movement and exercise and travelling.

I am refusing to be chained to the 8hour workday, 15/30 mentality again… and I am committing to a ministry that is all-of-life.

I am getting out of the four walls of an institution, out of the convenience of city life… and exploring the mountains and the valleys where  people have their own ways of expressing faith and possess a very fascinating culture. Where the harvest is richer than I could ever imagine.

For in Him I live and move and have my being….