Callings

In this episode, we talk with Fr. Dennis Holtschneider, president of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities (ACCU). Fr. Dennis shares his insights about leadership and our common call to listen to one another — even when we hold strongly opposing views. He also challenges us to consider “interruption stories,” those moments when we are called to respond to a compelling human need. Drawing on his experience as a teacher, university president, and leader in the healthcare industry, Fr. Dennis considers the ethics of care, our duty to one another, and the importance of “being political” for the common good. From our guest’s chance encounter with Joe Biden to how C.S. Lewis worked for him as a kind of “gateway drug to the heavier stuff,” we get glimpses into a life that would have been “only half as interesting had it been planned.”

In this episode, we speak with Rabbi Rachel Mikva, longstanding contributor to NetVUE and author of the new book Dangerous Religious Ideas: The Deep Roots of Self-Critical Faith in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Beacon, 2021). In the book, she probes the ways that the dangers that lurk in our religious identities and convictions can be a force for good or for evil. Rachel unpacks how critique of one’s own tradition—what she calls self-critical faith—can help facilitate conversation about religion in the public sphere. When we engage in such self-critique, we can begin to live our commitments and our callings through what she describes as a “hermeneutic of grace.” We talk with Rachel about the book, her own sense of calling, and what vocation can mean when it feels like the world is coming to an end. 

In this new episode, we talk to Paul Wadell and Charlie Pinches, authors of the new book Living Vocationally: The Journey of the Called Life (Cascade Books, 2021). The authors note that, while we live in a moralizing time, we have a limited vocabulary for describing issues of morality and character with any degree of nuance. They turn to the language of the virtues in order to capture the subtleties of the moral life and to help equip us for whatever life may send our way. The virtue of hope, in particular, accompanies us as we journey through a “bigger story” that encompasses all the seasons of our lives. Born out of the authors’ longstanding friendship, the book is also enriched by their many years of teaching undergraduates (Paul at St. Norbert College and Charlie at the University of Scranton). Enjoy this hour of reflection and storytelling about what it means to “live vocationally.”

Eboo Patel, founder of Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC), speaks passionately about work as a craft, and about the promises and pitfalls of charismatic leadership. Invoking such diverse sources as James Baldwin, William Carlos Williams, and The Grateful Dead, Patel discusses shifts in his thinking about leadership and listening as president of a non-profit over the course of the last decade. His forthcoming book explores the role of builders as opposed to critics, and he asks, how might colleges and universities help forge a new generation of builders? What can we do to help college students delve deeper into the complex problems of our time? What might students be able to accomplish, if we relieved them of our culture’s demand that they “make something of themselves,” and instead encouraged them to make something for others?

Can a person’s calling be shaped by driving into a new town on Annual Trash Day? Find out in this episode, which features Darby Ray, Professor of Civic Engagement at Bates College and co-director of the NetVUE faculty seminar. Darby encourages us to undertake what she describes as “necessary homework”—attending to ourselves and to our communities—and thereby emphasizes the importance of cultural humility and awareness. Vocation can offer us an experience of beauty and joy in a dark and harrowing world, prompting the serious work of engaging with others in intentional and mutual partnerships. We also learn about Darby’s mid-career call that took her from Mississippi to Maine, and how feminist and liberation theologies inform her work. 

Darby’s essay, “Self, World, and the Space Between: Community Engagement as Vocational Discernment” appeared in the NetVUE volume At This Time and In This Place: Vocation and Higher Education (Oxford UP, 2016). She is the author of Working (2011), Incarnation and Imagination: A Christian Ethic of Ingenuity (2008), and Theology That Matters: Ecology, Economy, and God (2006).

The book Leading Lives That Matter is a much-loved collection of vocation-related readings oriented toward undergraduate students. A new edition was published this summer, updated with new sections and several new readings, including pieces by Pope Francis, Malcolm Gladwell, Winona LaDuke,  Jhumpa Lahiri, Wangari Maathai, Toni Morrison, Larry Rasmussen, and Alice Walker. In this interview, editors Mark Schwehn and Dorothy Bass talk about the fortuitous events that led to the original project and the issues that guided their thinking in putting together the new edition. They also share stories about their own life trajectories, describe their understanding of each of their lives’ callings, and muse about their favorite texts to teach.

Shirley Roels, the founding director of NetVUE, currently serves as the executive director of the International Network for Christian Higher Education. In this inaugural episode of Callings, Shirley shares some of the twists and turns in her own life and describes the three “intertwined threads” that have informed her career: higher education, faith-based institutions, and organizational management.  At each moment of vocational reflection, Shirley has asked the question, “What needs doing that I can do?”