Good morning. My name is Jendi and I believe God put me on this earth to help. I am an addictions counselor here in Youngstown. I get to see people often times at their lowest, which is the worst part of my job. The best part of my job is that I get to see them on their path to becoming whole again as they surrender their demons and problems to God. Although the reasons I’m seeing them are hard to grasp, it is amazing to see God working in them and to see them realize, maybe for the first time, God’s presence. Recovery is a spiritual process for a lot of people and I thank God for calling me to this vocation. How lucky am I to be able to witness these amazing humans get better, one day at a time? It’s just an added bonus that I get to help them to see that they are not lost or helpless and it’s all because of God and with God’s help. Thank you.
In August of 1968, a 50 year anniversary for me, I graduated from the Warren City Schools, School of Practical Nursing in Warren , Ohio. I went on to earn additional degrees and certifications. My life vocation
has been as a nurse with my last 25 years of nursing providing hospice care at Hospice of the Valley.
l have felt God’s grace guiding me in the care of each case, helping me to calm patients and families in one of the most difficult life journeys they undertake. Dying generally is not, quote, “going to sleep and not waking up”. It can be a tough journey of “letting go and letting be”.
I feel that God has blessed me with the ability to help persons not only with their physical and emotional care, but to also provide spiritual nourishment. To be able to help patients and families navigate complex medical care and systems, to make end of life decisions such as Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitation or when the focus needs to shift from “cure” to “comfort care only”. The focus being to help provide quality of life upheld by a loving God. I thank my St John’s family and my Hospice chaplains for the spiritual help they have given me over the years.
l have been retired for 2 plus years now and laughingly say “l’m off duty now” but in reality as many of us older retired nurses know, we are never really “off duty” but ready to help and care when needed.
God calls us to do these things.
One of the definitions for the word Vocation I saw was “a summons or strong inclination to a particular state or course of action.” Sometimes it is not always an inclination or a summons, but sometimes it is a simple invitation. When I was invited to become a Reader/ Chalice Bearer, I realized it wasn’t just a chance to help out during our service, but it was an invitation from God. An opportunity to help deliver the word of God and to facilitate the receiving of Christ at his table.
I never take for granted the importance of my role as a Reader. I don’t just read the words on the service bulletin as they are printed. I try to deliver the lessons and prayers with the heart and feeling that the words were created with.
I try to fulfill my role as Chalice Bearer with the same conviction in which Christ lived his life. When I receive communion, I use it as an opportunity to not only remember why Jesus died for me, but also to receive him in my heart in the living present. Communion is when I reaffirm my faith and reflect on who God wants me to be, and how he wants me to live. As a Chalice Bearer, it is my privilege to serve at Christ’s table and facilitate the goodness of his goodness and love.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you this morning and allowing me to participate in our worship every week.
I am passionate about a few things in my life. My marriage, family and pets. Lately though I have become increasingly passionate about our Red Door Pantry, produce distribution, and women’s coffee.
Our ministries that feed and clothe our community are a true blessing. I believe in my heart that all of us that serve in these ministries find that some months your heart is filled with joy. But then there are times when our hearts get broken and despair can set in. What I have learned is that in an instant or by some unfortunate circumstance I could be in line for free food or clothing. I could become a client.
So we try to be fair and just in our dealings with the people. I try to listen to their stories about their day to day struggles. Sometimes laugh, cry, shake a hand or give a hug. I believe that is part of the essence of St. John’s. I would like to thank all that volunteer and put time into these wonderful programs.
And thank you for your time today.
God Bless
Bill Hogg
Meg’s Vocation Minute
I am Meg Silver. I am an English teacher. I was told I only had one minute to speak about vocation, so I wrote a poem to stay under my deadline.
Between Us
I love kids
And I give them books.
I give them mirrors.
And we recognize each other—
“That was so sad; I’ve felt that way too.”
“I have struggled with those same decisions.”
“Sometimes the world is so hard.”
“Can we believe in happy endings?”
I give them windows.
And we learn about the world—
“Did you ever know how much people struggle?”
“This place is more complicated than I thought.”
“I never knew life could be like that.”
“How can we rewrite our endings?”
And we have God between us—
that book,
that love,
that new understanding,
between us
and the world.
–Meg Silver
Good morning. I am Lance Grahn. As you know, I am an academic. I started my professional career as a member of the teaching faculty, and now I am an academic administrator. My academic life actually began in junior high school where I got hooked on Hispanic culture. I graduated from high school intending to pursue a Ph.D. in Spanish literature but left college on a path to a Ph.D. in Latin American history instead. That academic journey led my wife and me to Calvin College and revolutionary Central America where we experienced the social, economic, political, and personal impact of the life of the mind. Intellectual pursuits – in my case, history; in the case of several of my colleagues, theology—had meaning in the real world of both the poor and the powerful. Academics as vocation, not just as a career, characterized our work at Calvin.
Vocation as the basis and impetus for learning developed even further when I joined the faculty at Marquette University. During my first semester there, six Jesuit academics, their housekeeper, and he daughter were murdered on the campus of the University of Central America, a place where I had spent several days just three years earlier. The priests’ vocation of study, learning, and teaching in service to the poor and disenfranchised of El Salvador had cost all eight their lives. As a new faculty member at a sister Jesuit university and someone who had become personally familiar with the local reputation of the victims in a transformational experience at a Christian Reformed college, it was almost impossible, then, for me not to accept the invitation to enter into serious conversations with Jesuits and Catholic laity who led the campus onversations about mission and identity. Vocation is central to the Society of Jesus and to Jesuit education. Vocation is, in fact, central to the character of most faith-based colleges and universities. They all challenge us to ask why we do we do what we do, beyond doing something that we enjoy and doing something that we’re good at. What is the larger purpose of study, research, teaching, and academic publishing? Is there a greater meaning, a higher meaning to what we find to be personally fulfilling? The responses, of course, are more complex and more nuanced than I can describe in the last 15 seconds of my “vocation minute.” And even though the last 14 years of my academic career have been in public secular higher education, I still respond out of my Jesuit-framed world view. There is indeed a greater purpose, a higher meaning to what we academics do. Our work is a response to the divine, an activation of our God-given talent, a means to an end far beyond preparing students to become good employees. A vocational perspective on higher education means that we develop not only the workforce but that we also develop human beings better to be better equipped to live into their potential and, through our students, we develop communities that are better able to live into the ideals of life in community.
If we define our vocation as something that brings us joy, our passion, or our God given talent, hands down mine is photography.
When I was thirteen years old my Earth Science Teacher put a camera in my hand and whispered in my ear, “This will enable you to freeze time.” I knew! In that instant I knew that this was it! This was my thing! I got it!
Recently, I’ve started portrait photography. I love the conversations I have with people as I am taking their photos. These conversations help to relax them but if I am honest and truthful, they really help to relax me.
It is in these moments that their true self emerges and I see Jesus coming through them. It could be a twinkle in their eye, a look in the opposite direction, or a slight change in their smile. It is quick and only a glimpse but it is there and I am grateful to capture that moment and freeze it forever in time.