Duke Divinity School Professor Richard Lischer once wrote: “Vocation puts an end to you in order to disclose your true end.”
These words give me pause. Sometimes absorbing a profound truth requires a bit of courage. For so many years now, I have had a small quote from another writer, this one a poet, framed on my desk:
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future’s sakes.
I used to teach the poem “Two Tramps in Mud Time” to my middle school students, and we began by defining avocation as a hobby and vocation as a job. They spoke and wrote of the “worst” possible jobs—garbage collector, income tax investigator, factory worker, mortician—and the “dream” jobs—astronaut, professional sports team coach, National Geographic photographer, film star.
I tried to push them a bit into considering the possibility of the so-called “worst” jobs offering a kind of goodness and satisfaction that could not be found in those “dream” jobs, and although they came up with some good insights, their youth left them clearly unconvinced. “But,” I told them, “Robert Frost is suggesting that the ideal job is the one where you hesitate to even call it a job because you enjoy it so much. It is the work you would do for no pay if your financial circumstances didn’t require it. It is work that feels like play.”
Not many people find this meeting of vocation and avocation, for a variety of reasons. I am immeasurably grateful that I did. Even as a child, I was unconsciously applying Frost’s principle, as my most prolonged and pleasurable play was setting up a school in our basement and teaching various stuffed animals and dolls when my sisters refused to participate. Pursuing a career as an educator was inevitable, not because I was a woman in a time when it was one of the more “acceptable” choices, but because it was my passion.
And it was good. Middle school is a golden place, a time of in-between, a time when the child is disappearing—but not entirely, and the cares and challenges of a bigger world are precarious and exciting both. When I moved on to teach high school, there were new rewards—teaching more challenging material, conversing on a deeper level, watching these almost-adults transform as they developed their gifts, asked hard questions, and seriously considered future vocations.
When I retired, I began asking myself some hard questions. What becomes of a teacher when the classroom disappears? And who am I if I am not a teacher? But these questions about who we are when we relinquish something that has given us purpose and direction apply to many moments. Retirement is one relinquishing among many, as I’ve been realizing over the past several months. Thus, Lischer’s quote continues to both haunt and intrigue me: “. . . an end. . . in order to disclose our true end.”
What is this true end? Death? In a sense, yes, as we are reminded time and again in scripture that we are “dust and shall return to dust.” But that end is really only the “cover and title page,” as C.S. Lewis reminds us at the close of his final Narnia book The Last Battle, “Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever; in which every chapter is better than the one before.”
Now at last, in a season where I find myself having to relinquish meeting with the Life Change Book Club inside the Handlon Correctional Facility, I am once again standing on a precipice, wondering who I really am and what will become of me. When I set aside my vocation several years ago, I knew that teaching was the gift God gave me in order to strive to enlighten those tender souls put into my care, and in the process, to draw myself closer to the Giver of all good gifts.
Now, in this season, I am hoping that, in that striving, I offered my students and my fellow readers in prison something “for Heaven and the future’s sakes.” And so my prayer becomes “Oh God, when all else is set aside, I discover that I am your eager but bewildered student. Teach me, then, so that I am ready for Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read.”
Header photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash
39 Responses
I was one of those middle school kids! And I don’t know what was more important- your love for teaching or your obvious love for each kid in the classroom. It is the latter that sticks with me. Thank you.
Oh Amy–such high praise. Thanks for taking the time to read and comment.
Our children are who they are as young adults because of God’s call to you. So deeply grateful ti God that you answered this call.
Those two children of yours were wonders–and a joy and privilege to teach.
Thanks, Nancy for these thoughts and challenges, especially as this past week I formally announced to my dean and to HR at my community college my retirement in June, from a fulfilling 15 year second-career as coordinator of tutoring services, which I took on after my first 30+ year career of high school teaching and coaching. I especially appreciate the reminder from Lewis’ _The Last Battle, a book that I read only once long ago, and which apparently will need revisiting.
Every time that book gets better–and more insightful, especially in the world we live in these days! Hope you find your way back to it.
Nancy, I’m so fortunate to have been one of the students you taught during your few years at Holland Christian High School. (We first met when I delivered the newspaper to the home where you and your husband first moved on Pine Ave.) Later, I had you for an English class. Besides your vivacious spirit and winning smile, I especially remember wrestling with Existentialism when we read The Wall by Sartre. You awakened a love for literature and for good writing in me that remains to this day. When I went to college, I assumed that I would major in math or science, but eventually I came around to that love for literature that led me to major in English. I’ve never regretted that choice. As you taught us, literature is not just about good stories, it is about what it means to be human, about empathy, about our best selves and our worst selves. Thank you. Thank you. God’s blessings as you live into your vocation in your third third, as I have the privilege of the same in my third third of life.
Mark–As soon as I saw your name, I could picture you! So long ago now–I am glad you pursued your love of literature, and that you also have the privilege of living into your vocation, even now. Blessings. Thanks for connecting.
Thank you, Nancy for pointing out the mystery and promise of that coming chapter. Blessings to you.
Thanks, John.
Uplifting and encouraging words (how we need them!) from an extraordinary educator. My son was repeatedly given tasks that any reasonable person knew were far beyond any 7th grader’s capacity. (I could still list several.) But Ms. Knol had assigned them, so he completed them, of course. Blessings in your new stage of life!
Your son Klaas was a joy to teach!
Thanks for serving the book club at Handlon, Nancy. The students there were so enriched by your leadership, often talking about the books you read together and how much they were learning!
It was truly one of the best places to land every Tuesday night. Holy ground.
Blessings on your head, Nancy, for a lifetime of learning and giving. See you on the road, Pilgrim.
To quote Lewis once again: “Gratitude looks to the past, and love to the present.” Wise words for a pilgrim’s journey.
I have missed hearing your wonderful congregational prayers. What a blessing to read your essay and be able to hear it in my head through your remembered voice.
Thanks, Joan. Your praise means a lot to me.
Look out the window. 🙏
This from a poet I have long admired. Thank you.
“And gladly wolde /s/he lerne and gladly teche.”
You practiced a perfect blend of these whose impact on students enriched their lives.
Thank you, Nancy!
High praise from a stellar English professor!
Thanks, Henry.
Nancy,
Thank you for this beautiful piece! I wish I’d had the pleasure of teaching alongside you because it’s been clear to me over the years that you changed countless lives for the better.
In my study I have a plaque that I asked a friend of mine to make, stating words the late Lionel Basney of Calvin College said or wrote about teachers (I’m not certain which, because I learned of it secondhand), but it remains an inspiration for me in retirement: “You never know what your words will weigh when a student will remember them in a place you’ll never know.”
Let his wise words reassure you as well.
I love that quote–thank you, Mark. And I too would have enjoyed teaching beside you, as I have heard so many good things about you.
Ah Nancy- I echo good friend Mark Hiskes’ thoughts (He,like you, one who touched so many students). So grateful for your teaching passion and gifts.
And grateful that I did teach alongside you for many years – as we shared with others a way of sharing the faith we cherished with young children – in a Montessori way.
Bless you.
Many golden moments in those days of teaching side-by-side. I am grateful as well.
Ah Nancy- grateful that I did teach alongside you for many years – as we shared with others a way of sharing the faith we cherished with young children – in a Montessori way.
Bless you.
Teacher and eager bewildered student. Ready. Thank you for sharing the depths of wisdom from this chapter of your life, inspiring with every breath. Love.
Thank you for being a fellow pilgrim, dear friend.
I write ‘Mother’ on the forms that ask for my occupation. The best job in the world is the one that others don’t think of as a job at all. In truth it isn’t a job, it’s who I am. But that’s not a conversation people want when they challenge my reply to their question “What do you do?”
A most worthy profession! I’m sure your children are grateful.
Another proud alum of your classroom! What I remember most strongly is the sense that you loved the material and you loved being there with us, and that gave us the chance to love those things too.
And we did. And we do.
Dear dear Katie! What a gifted writer you were and are in your own right! I remember those days fondly–especially Honors English. Thank you.
Dear Nancy, I think you have found your new Vocation/Avocation for this time in your life. Thank you for blessing us with this.
Thank you for such generous support and encouragement, Jane!
Because of you, I know literary terms like “motif” and “vignette,” and when I use them I feel smart like my English HS teacher, Mrs. Knol, who let us read outside on nice days and always encouraged us to dig deeper into what we read for themes and meaning. Your classroom was a home away from home, like a book club I couldn’t wait to come to. Thanks for helping me read such a diversity of things to make me a better writer – a skill that is now large part of my (a)vocation. Thank you. ❤️💕
You know the way to an English teacher’s heart, Amanda. Those were wonder years for me…glad they were for you as well. (And even though your literary vocabulary may have increased, you were bright and eager from the start!)
Thank you Nancy for the kind and remarkable work you have done with some many students over the years. I was only in your study hall at Grand Rapids Christian and even that was a profound experience. Somehow you took an empty space and filled it with life where we explored novel words (I had to look them up in the dictionary but you knew them off-hand) and used them in fun sentences. Remarkably, I remember many words from those exchanges but one feels particularly relevant. You are indeed a preternatural gift. Thanks for helping me and so so many others feel loved and learn to love language.
Thanks for reminding me, Kyle! I remember it well. You always came into the room with a grin on your face, ready for the next challenge. I love it that you remember too. You blessed me with this message today–more than you know.