On the Bright Side

I’ve been reading Thomas Merton’s Seven Storey Mountain, his self-proclaimed “autobiography of faith.” The mountain borrows from Dante’s Mountain of Purgatory. In his book, Merton explains his frustrations as a young man at not really knowing his “vocation.” He felt called to be a monk, but was not quite sure if it was his vocation. He spent the better part of a decade looking for signs to verify his worthiness for such a calling. Rather trust his own instinct,  he convinced himself that he must be wrong and continued to go to work as an English professor at St. Bonaventure, in upstate, New York  He milled about writing novels and teaching, convinced that what he really wanted to do - become a monk - could not be his actual vocation. Thus he stayed stuck in a job that kept him from growing into his potential. His hang up about his true vocation got me thinking about the word, and about the difference between a job and a vocation; between a vocation and an occupation. A vocation