This is part of a roundtable on the COVID-19 pandemic and the work of history.
Pre-COVID, my days were largely divided between work life and home life, and while I was never perfect at separating the two, I had achieved some semblance of balance. Since isolation orders went into effect in March, that balance is completely gone. My life as a mother and as a faculty member and administrator are on top of each other (sometimes literally, given how often the kids want to be on my lap while I work) and the resulting whiplash can be disorienting and even disheartening.
This new abnormal has caused me to pause and ask myself what gives any coherence to my days. Coherence might seem impossible when one minute I’m cleaning up spilled Cheerios and the next minute I’m having a Zoom discussion about how we will teach at the seminary this fall. But as I think through what, if anything, connects these disparate parts of my life, I keep returning to the idea of vocation.
As a faculty member and administrator at a small theological college in Montréal, as well as an ordained Episcopal priest, I spend a lot of time thinking and talking with students about vocation. There are many misconceptions around what the term really means. Many students and laypeople equate vocation with ordination. Many clergy equate it with their job. Many I meet outside of the church, especially in a place like Québec, equate it with being a monk or a nun. I often engage with these people to expand their definition of vocation—one that is not restricted to the ordained or those who have taken up life as a monastic. Indeed, one does not have to be religious to find the concept of vocation helpful.
What is it, I ask my students, that most excites you about ministry? Where do you find that same excitement outside of the church? In answering those questions, I help my students think through what their underlying vocation might be, and how they are being called to live it out both within and outside of the church. I have long thought that these kinds of questions would be helpful in doctoral programs as we think more broadly about graduate education and its possibilities. What is it that excites you about your research and writing? Where do you find that same excitement outside of the academy? In what ways can you bring those together?
The pandemic has gotten me thinking again about my own vocation as a teacher. Doing so has allowed me to rediscover the ways teaching is present in my life as a parent and professor. There will still be times when the demands to get more crackers and milk will compete with the need to revise an article and send ten more emails. Underneath it all, however, is a deeper sense of my vocation and the new places I have learned to look for it in these extraordinary days.