Vocations Quotes

“My work has been the education I avoided.”
― William Zinsser

“I’m excited to announce that Book 2 of our series, My Job: More People at Work Around the World, is in production. Having met hundreds of people in fascinating jobs, I faced an enormous challenge in selecting the stories to include in Book 2 . . . but I believe this collection will surprise and delight you. It covers a range of jobs in the following sections:

Health and Recovery
Education and Finance
Agribusiness and Food Processing
Arts and Culture
Activism and Diplomacy
The book allows you to experience what it’s like to be an addiction-recovery counselor trained as a clown in London, an art teacher working with gang members in Chicago, a midwife working in rural villages in Guatemala, or a mobile-banking agent making her first million in Zambia.

Book 2 will take you places you’ve never been, from the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia to a serene beach in Tel Aviv, Israel, and take you deep into the true stories of what it’s like to work at jobs as disparate as teaching a grieving widow to dance, to negotiating with a terrorist.

The book will publish in March and is available for preorder at Amazon.”
― Suzanne Skees

“Paradoxically, the reformed churches embraced the criminalization of sin and shifted towards individualism as a means of freeing people from the onerous demands of the Church. The Church unwittingly propelled Western society into secularism and inaugurated the immanent frame, which remains our primary mindset in the West. Jesus endeavored to free people from a centralized, hierarchical, religious system of laws that benefited the few. As the Church became a principality, it created just such a system.”
― C. Andrew Doyle, Vocatio: Imaging a Visible Church

“Reclaiming neighborliness as part of the communal life is essential to Christ’s vision. No person can live unto themselves. It is simply impossible. But, more importantly the personalization of neighborliness returns authority to the members of the small community the local church serves. Its members start to care for one another again, which taps into the inclusive DNA of the Jesus Movement.”
― C. Andrew Doyle, Vocatio: Imaging a Visible Church

“Art in its essence is a dreamy vocation.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, The Oneironaut’s Diary

“As God, Christ, the Virgin, the prince of the apostles, and the shepherds labored, even so must we labor in our callings. God has no hands and feet of his own. He must continue his labors through human instruments. The lowlier the task the better. The milkmaid and the carter of manure are doing a work more pleasing to God than the psalm singing of a Carthusian. Luther never tired of defending those callings which for one reason or another were disparaged. The mother was considered lower than the virgin. Luther replied that the mother exhibits the pattern of the love of God, which overcomes sins just as her love overcomes dirty diapers.”
― Roland H. Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther

“I share your doubt,' said Uncle Ambrose. 'But farm by all means if you wish. Any one of the local farmers will be delighted to instruct you and your total lack of talent will give great pleasure.”
― Elizabeth Goudge, Linnets and Valerians