Sommaire
Pagination de ldition papier
Guide
InterVarsity Press
P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426
ivpress.com
email@ivpress.com
2020 by Steven D. Garber
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from InterVarsity Press.
InterVarsity Press is the book-publishing division of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, a movement of students and faculty active on campus at hundreds of universities, colleges, and schools of nursing in the United States of America, and a member movement of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. For information about local and regional activities, visit intervarsity.org.
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.
While any stories in this book are true, some names and identifying information may have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.
Cover design and image composite: David Fassett
Interior design: Daniel van Loon All interior photos, unless otherwise indicated, are by Steven Garber.
Images: beach waterfront: IakovKalinin / iStock / Getty Images Plus
colorful paint: photominus / iStock / Getty Images Plus
moving water: greenantphoto / iStock / Getty Images Plus
textile pattern: Sirijit Jongcharoenkulchai / EyeEm / Getty Images
ISBN 978-0-8308-4821-8 (digital)
ISBN 978-0-8308-4595-8 (print)
This digital document has been produced by Nord Compo.
For my grandchildren,
longing that you will live into the vision of a seamless life,
a coherence between who you are and why you are,
giving meaning to what you do with the lives that are yours.
![A BEGINNING MOST OF LIFE is pretty autobiographical We are sons of Adam and - photo 3](/uploads/posts/book/416447/images/fig_1.jpg)
A BEGINNING
MOST OF LIFE is pretty autobiographical.
We are sons of Adam and daughters of Eve, each one with histories written into the history of people who have lived through the centuries and cultures before us, the joys and sorrows of their lives mysteriously twined into the very meaning of our lives. It cannot not be.
True for everyone everywhere, it is true of me.
Almost always, when someone asks, Why do you think about vocation like you do? I will simply say that it begins with my Grandfather Gilchrist, and tell the tale of the way that ora et labora, prayer and work, were woven into the meaning of his life. That he allowed me insummer after summer, year after year, giving me the gift of seeing over his shoulder and through his heart as he prayed and workedhas formed me, heart and mind, soul and strength.
My grandparents lived between Durango and Cortez, Colorado, in the grand geography known as the Four Cornersthe wonderful place in the American Southwest where the mesas meet the mountains. It is a land that I still love. My earliest memories are of its air and the wonder of the wind blowing through the aspen leaves, gracing its meadows and river valleys, making the world new again, morning by morning. At least, it seemed that way to me as a child. They had cattle, and I gloried in them, from my first years knowing the differences between the breeds and why they mattered. I still remember an exceptional morning walking through the corral by the barn, a very little boy that I was, and meeting an Angus bull who began to chase me. I thought I was going to die.
There were better days though, many of them. Riding horseback through the pastures, catching frogs in creeks and bringing them home for my always-and-ever kind grandmother who fried their legs. And then best of all, rounding up my relatives for a home-grown rodeo, complete with calves who bucked their best.
One day a Navajo man came to the ranch, asking if my grandfather would trade a blanket for a cow. They made a deal, and through the years of my boyhood the blanket was my grandfathers saddle blanket; not a collectors item, but a simple, ordinary saddle blanket, bearing the smells and sweat of a horse. When my grandfather died, the blanket became mine, and over many years I have prized it, loving what it means to me about the life and world that is mine to remember.
The blanket now graces a shelf full of books that matter to me, all on the theme of vocation, the complex and rich word that it is. As this book was being born, one morning I laid the blanket out on the floor of Regent Colleges art gallery, and then walked around it, wanting to get the light and shadow right, hoping that I could find a way to capture its native beauty and textured meaningits history threading its way through the years of my life, a memory for me of what seamlessness is and ought to be.
This is a book about vocation, but a different book, a collection of essays and photos. An unusual effort for the publisher, it is new for me too. Rather than making an argument that is developed over scores of pages and many chapters, this one is a deeper and deeper reflection on one question: What does it mean to see seamlessly? To see the whole of life as important to God, to us, and to the worldthe deepest and truest meaning of vocationis to understand that our longing for coherence is born of our truest humanity, a calling into the reality that being human and being holy are one and the same life.
Yes, ora et labora, in my life and in yours.
Photo of my grandfathers saddle blanket.
![MADISON AVENUE MAD MEN AND MUCH MORE MADISON AVENUE Mad Men Image and - photo 4](/uploads/posts/book/416447/images/fig_2.jpg)
MADISON AVENUE, MAD MEN, AND MUCH MORE
MADISON AVENUE. Mad Men. Image and reality. True stories and sort-of-true stories and not-so-true stories.
While visiting New York City, very close to Madison Ave., I thought about the stories of our lives. Where do they come from? Who tells them? Should we believe them?
Having watched most of Mad Menfalling, falling, falling as they doI was intrigued by another story, this one of a company called FiveStone, which offers a different way to imagine the meaning of the marketplace. As their website says, FiveStone locks arms with organizations fighting to make the world a better place. We use design to help nonprofits and social enterprises solve their biggest challenges and create positive impact.... We want to see a world where thoughtful organizations win and good pushes itself into every aspect of society.
Brought into being by Jason Locy, a Virginian now living in Brooklyn, his company tells stories about ideas, about organizations, about businesses, doing their best to tell the truth about the way things are in a way that is imaginative, compelling, and engaging. Not spinning but instead listening carefully and then creatively offering windows into what honestly is, even as every one of us dreams of what might bedoing something that is rare but is at the heart of the best stories, always.
The day before I got there, Jason was in Detroit at work for a client whose work is to bring renewal to debilitated schools. Nothing very romantic about that, but seeing his labor as written into the calling to seek the flourishing of the citywherever the city may be foundhe has drawn his team of creatives around what the schools are doing, what still needs to be done, and what help they need to accomplish their vision.