We are just winding up to that stage of the school year when we will ask senior students which subjects they need to study next year. That is a whole long process and will not conclude until a month into next term - but early this week senior students visited a Careers Expo in Richmond - and on Wednesday evening parents visited the Careers Roadshow, hosted this year at Nelson College.
Over the next ten weeks students will be doing a lot of research exploring what they are good at, what they like doing, looking at personal preferences (working indoors or outside, with others or on their own, thinking and problem-solving or physical work - and all the other foundation questions).
Then parents and students will gather with teachers and sort out the courses our young adults will need to reach their career goals.
That process is often called "vocational", a word from the Latin vocare "to call" which leads to "called" or "calling". That comes from our understanding that God creates us with a purpose, and fully equipped with the seeds of the gifts we need to fulfil that purpose - and so God "calls" us.
Society narrows the word to mean "job", and Catholics have sometimes further narrowed the concept of "vocation" to priesthood and religious life - and certainly that is one calling.
But God calls each one of us - and in all sorts of directions.
For example, I was called to be a teacher (not necessarily in a school), to be a husband and father, to lead and to follow. I believe I am called to work my way through difficult concepts and make them accessible for people - one of the things I was best at as a teacher. I am called to be a friend, an idealist, a member of different communities ... you get the picture.
The important thing to remember is that EACH ONE of those things is done in partnership with God - so each one is important (and holy).
Thinking of God being limited to calling people to jobs is lazy thinking; thinking of God only calling priests and religious (and apparently not caring so much about the rest of us) is verging on the ridiculous!
God made each of us, loves each of us as only God can love, gifted each of us, and expects all sorts of things from each of us. We are called to be all we can be in many, many areas!
Over the next ten weeks New Zealand secondary schools focus on career-based callings - but for the rest of the year Catholic schools like Garin work hard on all the other things we are called to: becoming the whole people our Creator created us to be.
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