Transcript Peak Experiences in Personal Stories of Calling Among

Peak-Experiences in Personal
Stories of Calling
Among University Professors
Don Thompson and
Cindy Miller-Perrin
Pepperdine University
Faith, Hope, and Work Conference
February 10, 2006
Pt. Loma Nazarene University
Presentation Overview
• We will describe the methods used to obtain
vocational autobiographies from faculty
members, including preparatory reading material
and writing prompts.
• We will describe the content analysis of the
faculty autobiographies, focusing on the peakpivotal-experiences in their lives that shaped
and clarified their vocational paths.
• Finally, we will discuss gender differences
experienced by these faculty in discerning and
living out vocation.
Purpose of the Study
• To examine peak-experiences of
vocational discernment and action among
university professors through evaluation of
self-reflective writing.
Research Methodology
• Frederick Buechner states in the Alphabet
of Grace that most theology is essentially
autobiography.
• Our method is based on a content analysis
of vocational autobiographies written by
over 90 faculty members from two
Christian universities.
Faculty Sample
• Faculty were recruited from:
– Faith and Learning Seminars
– Faith and Vocation Workshop
• 92 faculty completed autobiographies
– Response rates range from 65%-84%
Demographic Characteristics
of the Sample
Mean Age:
40 years
Gender:
43% Female
57% Male
Marital Status:
16% Single
81% Married
Race/Ethnicity:
7% African American
7% Asian
79% Caucasian
Religious Affiliation:
21% Catholic
78% Protestant
1% Jewish
Vocation Readings
• Thompson, D., & Miller-Perrin, C. (2003). Understanding vocation:
Discerning and responding to God's call. Leaven, 11, 48-53.
• Farnham, S. G., Gill, J. P., McLean, R. T., & Ward, S. M. (1991).
Listening hearts: Discerning call in community. Harrisburg, PA:
Morehouse Publishing.
• Palmer, P. J. (2000). Let your life speak: Listening for the voice of
vocation. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, Inc.
• Himes, M. (1995). Doing the truth in love: Conversations about
God, relationships, and service. Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist
Press.
• Rayburn, C. (1997). Vocation as calling: Affirmative response or
"wrong number". In D.P. Bloch & L.J. Richmond (Eds.), Connections
between spirit and work in career development (pp. 163-183). Palo
Alto, CA: Davies-Black Publishing.
• Buechner, F. (1969). The hungering dark. (pp. 25-33). New York:
Harper & Row Publishers.
• Parks, S. D. (2000). Big questions, worthy Dreams. San Francisco,
CA: Jossey-Bass Inc.
Vocational Autobiography
Prompts - Past Reflections
• Reflect on your past and how you have become who you
are
– Describe major “turning points” along your vocational
journey.
– Discuss moments of crisis or confusion as well as
moments of joy and clarity along your past vocational
journey (e.g., experiences that have affirmed or
shaken your sense of calling).
– Write about friends or mentors who have contributed
to your vocational development.
– Include distractions, tensions, or barriers that have
hindered the pursuit of your vocational calling.
Vocational Autobiography
Prompts – Present Reflections
• Focus on your present calling and your role as a mentor
to students
– Describe evidence you have that you are living your
call now.
– Explain how you practice ongoing discernment to
your call.
– Identify what you do to mentor &/or facilitate a sense
of vocation in your students.
Maslow’s Account of the Locus
of Peak-Experience
• The sacred is in the ordinary, that is, it is to
be found in one’s daily life, in one’s
neighbors, friends, and family, in one’s
back yard.
• Experiences occur through
– Life Events
– Interactions with others
• Mentors or Protégés
• Friendships
• Community
Peak-Experiences Described
in Faculty Essays
•
•
Turning Points
Mentoring
– As Protégés
– As Mentors
•
•
Barriers and Obstacles
Gender Specific Findings
Maslow’s Account of PeakExperiences as Turning Points
• Revelations, mystical illuminations,
ecstasies or transcendent experiences
• Peak-experiences are individual, resulting
in
•
•
•
•
Personal change
Feeling sacred
Personal heaven
Movement toward a perfect identity
Turning Points
Literature
“At each transition [of life] we wrestle with fundamental
matters of faith. As young adults we choose a faith of our
own to give purpose and direction to our lives. In midlife
we trust God with the character and meaning of our lives
when we are not all that we hoped we would be; we
learn to trust God in the midst of our limitations. In our
senior years we find that the only way we can let go is
through a fundamental faith in God, a God who is bigger
than our work, our career and our ministry.” - Gordon
Smith, Courage and Calling
Turning Points
Discussion
Have you had any peakexperiences that have
contributed to the realization of
your own calling?
Turning Points - Events
• Death of family member or close friend
• Life’s mistakes & wrong turns
• Education
• Accepting Jesus
• Conflict, tension, growing pains
• Responding to suffering in the world
• Parenting
Turning Points – Outcomes
• Feeling as though nothing else matters
• Sensing spiritual growth
• Experiencing a deep sense of joy, satisfaction,
contentment, peace, excitement, renewed
energy
• Receiving positive feedback from others
• Receiving answers to prayer
Turning Points
Essay Responses
All of my science courses seemed like work; all the
literature courses seemed like play. On Thanksgiving
holiday, I had to work through some heavy-duty
equilibrium problems for my quantitative analysis
chemistry course, and I was to read Thornton Wilder’s
Our Town for my American literature course. The power
of the play overwhelmed me. I didn’t know it then, but I
was feeling the difference between what Thomas De
Quincey called the literature of knowledge and the
literature of power. And I began to think, “Something is
wrong here. Why am I competent in but so unmoved by
my major, and why do plays and stories and novels and
poems move me so?”
Turning Points
Essay Responses
I had a dream that I was walking through a snowy wood with sparse, straggly
trees. I came to a small clearing, occupied by a concentration camp. A few
ramshackle wooden buildings with barbed wire strung around them... I knew
that my job was to sneak in and rescue the people imprisoned there. I went in
and brought a person out on my back. We were trudging away toward safety
when I heard voices and then dogs closing on us... I kept going, but in
exhaustion I let that person slide off my back and just kept trudging forward.
They wanted the prisoner, not me. Now I was alone and in despair, trudging
across one snowy hillock and then another under a featureless gray sky, no
sense of where I was going, just alone with the depth of my failure and despair.
Then I crossed the crest of one hillock and found not another valley and
hillock, but a scene of grandeur set before me on an impossibly vast scale. I
looked out and away at a turbulent gray sea crashing against a rocky coast and
knew that those waves and boulders were in fact on the scale of mountains and
the vista extended out not just as far as I could see but far beyond. I was
immediately shocked by the awe, delight, and gratitude that first displaced my
despair and then settled into an awareness, that I was very small—not
necessarily insignificant, but definitely very, very small—that things were going
on in the world on a scale that I could hardly imagine and never know. The
dream settled the lord and disciple matter, letting me know that I would be
needing not just a lord, but a savior. The work is God’s. If I get to participate in
it in some way, that’s great. But the work is God’s.
Turning Points
Essay Responses
I was watching the news when a disturbing story
came on. In England, two young boys had
kidnapped a toddler and killed him. I couldn’t
get over that event. After hearing that story, I
began to wonder what would cause someone,
particularly children to do such a horrific thing.
At that point I changed my major to psychology,
transferred to a different school, with a better
psychology program, and focused on
understanding child development.
Maslow’s Account of PeakExperiences through Mentoring
• Basic human needs can be fulfilled only by
and through other human beings, i.e.
society. Thus, the need for community,
belongingness, and contact with others.
• The best way to become a better helper is
to become a better person. But one
necessary aspect of becoming a better
person is via helping other people. One
must do both simultaneously.
Mentoring Literature
•
•
•
•
•
•
Recognition of their Protégés
Support
Challenge
Inspiration
Dialogue
Mutual Attraction Toward Similar Aims
Sharon Daloz Parks, Big Questions, Worthy Dreams
Mentoring Literature
• “The power of our mentors is not necessarily in the models of good
teaching they gave us [...] Their power is in their capacity to awaken
a truth within us, a truth we can reclaim years later by recalling their
impact on our lives.” - Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening
for the Voice of Vocation
• “In academic culture most listening is critical listening. We tend to
pay attention only long enough to develop a counterargument; we
critique the student’s or the colleague’s ideas; we mentally grade
and pigeonhole each other. In society at large, people often listen
with an agenda, to sell or petition or seduce. Seldom is there a
deep, openhearted, non-judging reception of the other. And so we
all talk louder and more stridently and with a terrible desperation. By
contrast, if someone truly listens to me, my spirit begins to expand.”
- Mary Rose O’Reilley, Radical Presence: Teaching as
Contemplative Practice
Mentoring - Protégé
Discussion
Was there a person who, as a mentor,
contributed to your vocational
development?
Mentoring – Protégé Themes
• From teachers, professors &
colleagues
• Through scripture & inspirational
writing
• Via spouses, parents, family
members, church family & friends
Mentoring – Protégé
Essay Responses
Throughout my life, my grandmother wrote several
letters to me. In almost every one she included
the following verse, from II Timothy 2:20: ‘In a
large house there are not only articles of gold and
silver, but also of wood and clay; some are for
noble purposes, made holy, useful to the Master
and prepared to do any good work.’ This advice
gave me a sense that I was called by God to do
important things.
Mentoring – Protégé
Essay Responses
One of my professors encouraged me to
pursue graduate school. He even went so
far as to sign out a school car, make
appointments for me with faculty, and drive
me to the university to consider its program
in human development. He encouraged me
to consider teaching at the university level
and helped me find my first academic post.
Mentoring – Mentor Themes
• Encourage, serve, support, lead, nudge, excite,
energize, hear, listen, share inner lives
• Understand vocation as journey
• Find where deep gladness meets deep hunger
• Learn about self, giftedness, passions, life
purpose
• Help students navigate faith integration
• Build and foster courage
Mentoring – Mentor
Essay Responses
I need to listen to my students. I need to hear what
they are hearing. I need to be able to take their
perspective as I decide what and when to share
my own vocational journey. Perhaps it is enough
that they fully grasp that vocation is a journey; they
don’t have to understand it or be able to articulate
their own vocation. They just need to accept that if
they listen they will eventually find as Buechner
says “where their deep gladness meets the world’s
deep hunger.”
Maslow’s Account of PeakExperiences as
Barriers/Obstacles
• Besides peak-experiences, Maslow
mentions so called “plateau-experiences”
but omits discussion of struggles, barriers,
or obstacles. These “valley-experiences”
do occur frequently in our essays as
contributing to vocational discernment and
action.
Barriers/Obstacles Literature
• Personal Values, Beliefs, and Emotions
– Secular views of vocation, fear
• Cultural Values
– Material success, competition, productivity
• Personal and Psychological Needs
– Security, control, certainty, power
• Social and Interpersonal Circumstances
– Finances, family responsibilities, stereotypes
(Farnham et al., 1991; Rayburn, 1997; Thompson & Miller-Perrin,
2003)
Barriers/Obstacles
• Various obstacles or barriers may interfere
with our ability to discern or act upon our
vocational callings.
• Barriers serve as challenges that either
– create struggles that we must overcome
– create an impasse that redirects our journey
Barriers/Obstacles Discussion
Question
Have you experienced any
barriers/obstacles to pursuing your
calling?
Barriers/Obstacles - Themes
• Pride, self-centeredness, prejudice
• Lack of faith, lack of self-confidence
• Struggle with traditional gender roles
• Balance between home and profession
• Health setbacks
• Family conflict, divorce, remarriage
• Church culture
Barriers/Obstacles to
Vocational Action
Essay Responses
My first semester was painful. Straight out of graduate
school, I embraced my students excited and ready to
embark on an intellectual journey. I found, however, that
my students responded to my enthusiasm with
indifference, sleepiness, and even hostility. I was also
disheartened to see racial tensions and divisions in and
outside of my class with minority students coming to me
to say that they felt depressed and alienated on campus.
I felt that I had to be an entertainer instead of a teacher
and a radical social activist instead of a private and
objective researcher.
Barriers/Obstacles to
Vocational Action
Essay Responses
My biggest enemy is me. I have learned that the hand of God is
real. The voice that woke me up and filled my heart with joy when I
was 9 still rings in my ears. The toughest challenges and the
steepest hills I had taken on have only been conquered when I don’t
doubt my creator, that He is with me. Through trials and troubles, I
have learned how much my life is His. It is only when I doubt Him
that I weaken. I am glad I have lived through these trials because
without them, I would not be as strong as I am today. There are
many people in the world who live in the light of God. They may not
be strong or wealthy or schooled. They just are. To those people I
take off my hat and bow as I recognize that they are in this journey
with me. It is when I lack humility that I invite doubt and weakness.
As I look ahead, I can see that the road is not all flat, but certainly if
there are obstacles ahead I will be able to overcome them because I
am not alone. I never have been.
Barriers/Obstacles to
Vocational Action
Essay Responses
Our home was no Norman Rockwell tableau. I recall silence, tension,
and hurt. My parents were too often angry and frustrated, especially
with each other. All was not well between my parents, though I never
doubted their love for each other. My father was the product of a
troubled marriage. His parents divorced when he was a young man.
His father was a harsh, even a brutal taskmaster, and my dad had
suffered beatings at his hand. The residual anger and hurt went deep.
Add to that the financial worries, and you have the makings of an
unhappy household. I, the second oldest, grew up worrying about
everything and everybody. Somehow, I adopted the role of the family
“fixer.” It wasn’t a proper role (I was doomed to failure), but I cared a
lot and wanted everything to be all right. I also wanted a relationship
with my father, but it just seemed impossible. I felt things, I had
questions and needs and dreams, but there was no one to share them
with. Mom and dad were consumed with survival. There was no space
for quiet, one-on-one conversations. It never occurred to them to have
a personal, extended conversation with me. In fact, my first real
conversation with my father came when I was thirty.
Gender and Barriers/Obstacles
Literature
• The topic of gender differences in
vocational calling has not been examined
empirically.
• Research in the areas of faith and identity
development suggests the potential impact
of gender on vocational development.
(Das & Harries, 1996 Pastorino, Dunham, Kidwell, Bacho,
& Lamborn, 1997)
Gender Specific Themes
• Women were more likely than males to describe
the presence of barriers/obstacles in their
vocational pursuits.
• Women reported the following interpersonal,
environmental, and social circumstances as
interferring with their ability to pursue their
vocations:
–
–
–
–
–
Views/opinions of others (e.g., parent, teacher or professor)
Gender discrimination
Pressure/desire to get married
Raising children
Traditions of church
Gender Specific
Barriers/Obstacles
Essay Responses
While it may be best that I didn’t end up a
youth minister, realizing that I was limited
because of my sex was deeply
disconcerting and left me a bit confused as
to where God was leading me. In fact, I
recall thinking that God only called men to
positions of ministry and so I resigned
myself to that reality.
Gender Specific
Barriers/Obstacles
Essay Responses
The culture of my church indicates that women should
stay home with their children and tend to the family. In
spite of this there are many women who work outside of
the home at my church, but I would not be surprised that
many, if not all of us feel guilty. I have attempted on
three separate occasions to leave my professional
positions to be a “stay at home mom,” but in every
instance I was home for a little more than a year and I
would return to work part-time and then eventually full
time. This struggle has greatly clouded my search
for vocation.
Conclusions
• Mentors play an important role in the process of
vocational discernment.
• Turning points play a key role in shaping one’s
vocational journey.
• A significant number of faculty reported
experiencing barriers to living out their calling.
• Barriers manifest differently for men versus
women.
Conclusions
• The process of reflecting on one’s
vocational journey is self-validating and
offers its own intrinsic value.
• The process of discussing one’s
vocational autobiography builds
community and serves as a source of
encouragement to others.
Community Building
I really did enjoy the evening and was
encouraged in my faith and my calling
from listening to the others. These small
group meetings to share and study issues
related to vocation have done more to
foster camaraderie than any other activity I
have participated in as a faculty
member. Thanks for making it possible.
Touching Heaven, Touching Others
This past spring I asked my students in one of my classes to write
their own vocational journey as an introductory paper. On our first
day of class, I closed the session by reading my Vocational Journey
paper from last summer. In the paper, I discussed several personal
and professional challenges that I have shared with few people. I felt
vulnerable sharing such a personal reflection, but was hopeful that it
would be a catalyst for further sharing by the students. When I
finished reading the paper, the students didn’t say much and we
moved on to closing items and the class ended. Since we only met
once a week, by the next class meeting the topic had moved on and
we never discussed my paper. While the class became very close, I
often wondered what the students thought of the paper and if
perhaps it had made them uncomfortable. However, when I read the
final class papers and my teacher evaluations I was surprised and
humbled at the number of students who wrote extensively about the
impact my sharing so openly had on them. I was stretched and I
think they were stretched as well which was ultimately very
gratifying.