Plagiarizing Buechner

 

This short poem by J. Pittman McGehee appears in his book Growing Down.

When a young priest, I

wrote a note to noted

author/theologian, Frederick

Buechner. I asked forgiveness

for all the plagiarizing I

had done of his good work

and thanked him for this

profound influence on my

theological world view.

By return mail on lined

paper from a legal pad he wrote:

"I was sitting by the sea, wondering

if the world wanted another word

from me, and your letter came."

Frederick Buechner's Obituary in the New York Times ~ August, 2022

Vocation

+VOCATION COMES FROM the Latin vocare, "to call," and means the work a person is called to by God.  There are all different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God rather than of society, say, or the superego, or self-interest.

By and large a good rule for finding out is this: The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need to do and (b) that the world needs to have done. If you really get a kick out of your work, you've presumably met requirement (a), but if your work is writing cigarette ads, the chances are you've missed requirement (b). On the other hand, if your work is being a doctor in a leper colony, you have probably met requirement (b), but if most of the time you're bored and depressed by it, the chances are you have not only bypassed (a), but probably aren't helping your patients much either.

Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do. The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.

Frederick Buechner -Originally published in Wishful Thinking and later in Beyond Words

Vocation

+VOCATION COMES FROM the Latin vocare, "to call," and means the work a person is called to by God.  There are all different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God rather than of society, say, or the superego, or self-interest.

By and large a good rule for finding out is this: The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need to do and (b) that the world needs to have done. If you really get a kick out of your work, you've presumably met requirement (a), but if your work is writing cigarette ads, the chances are you've missed requirement (b). On the other hand, if your work is being a doctor in a leper colony, you have probably met requirement (b), but if most of the time you're bored and depressed by it, the chances are you have not only bypassed (a), but probably aren't helping your patients much either.

Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do. The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.

Frederick Buechner -Originally published in Wishful Thinking and later in Beyond Words