Ever wonder why people choose to become rabbis, priests, ministers or imams? Ever consider what it means to think of your own work as more than a job, but as a calling? Although it’s often assumed to be a real question for clergy, The Calling, a wonderful documentary premiering tonight on PBS (9 PM, Eastern and Pacific, 8 PM in the rest of the country), uses the stories of clergy to open that question for all of us.
The Calling will air in two parts, tonight and tomorrow night, and whether you are interested in the fascinating personal journeys of a bunch of emerging spiritual leaders, how “regular” people conduct their own spiritual journeys, or how any of us can find greater meaning in the work that we do, you will want to see this film. In a world which often disconnects us from the reason that we chose our professions, or one in which economic necessity takes the choice away from us, we still have the power to treat our work as a calling, and when we do, great things happen.
Watching The Calling, and taking a few moments to check out the interactive Calling website, could help transform the mundane into the meaningful, and the everyday into the sacred. It’s hard not to be inspired by the people chosen by documentarian Daniel Alpert, even harder to miss how powerfully and sensitively he tells their stories. But what I like best about The Calling, is the way it invited each of us to think about what calls to us.
So I ask you, what’s your calling? Whatever you do, whether experience your work as an expression of your calling or not, each of us is called in this life to many different things. How about you? Feel free to answer here and/or to add your answer at whatsyourcalling.org.