Discovering the writing of William Stringfellow some years ago was a memorable find. Here he is on "Career vs. Vocation"

“I had elected then [in my early student years] to pursue no career. To put it theologically, I died to the idea of career and to the whole typical array of mundane calculations, grandiose goals and appropriate schemes to reach them…. I do not say this haughtily; this was an aspect of my conversion to the gospel….

“[Later] my renunciation of ambition in favour of vocation became resolute; I suppose some would think, eccentric. When I began law studies, I consider that I had few, if any, romantic illusions about becoming a lawyer, and I most certainly did not indulge any fantasies that God had called me, by some specific instruction, to be an attorney or, for that matter, to be a member of any profession or any occupation. I had come to understand the meaning of vocation more simply and quite differently.

“I believed then, as I do now, that I am called in the Word of God … to the vocation of being human, any work, including that of any profession, can be rendered a sacrament of that vocation. On the other hand, no profession, discipline or employment, as such, is a vocation.” A Keeper of the Word: Selected Writings of William Stringfellow (Eerdmans, 1994), pp. 30-31

"Humans are most likely the only species that experiences disgust, and we seem to be the only one capable of loathing its own species" William Miller in The Anatomy of Disgust quoted by Richard Beck in Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality and Mortality. What a scary observation. I mused on it with Murphy the Cocker Spaniel, and agreed it seemed plausible.

Note to self and anyone else who might be interested: it is vital (one’s own soul may depend upon it) to avoid sentimentality in Christian liturgy and worship. 

The message of love in the Gospels (harsh, costly, electric, realistic and more generous that we can imagine) is distorted by this contagious, hapless condition.  What forms does it take?  Perhaps the most commonplace is its wish to make participants feel good.  The Gospel becomes always, only and pre-eminently a consolation of a sugary kind.  The examples are legion.  One is so ubiquitous it is not seen: the equation of the Gospel with niceness.  Christians who are not ‘nice’ like this are thought deficient even when they are loving and just.  Liturgically, sentimentality finds various forms.  I have observed the celebrant at the Eucharist, when presiding versus populum (facing the people), repeatedly eye-balling and scanning the faces of the people with a warm and soft expression rather like an ingratiating TV host, even when reciting the words of institution. On this theme I discovered an interesting article about priestly narcissism which points out that since the move from ad orientem to versus populum (the move from having the priest and people face east to having the priest and congregation face each other) the priest becomes, inevitably, the focus of the action and is obliged to become a ‘performer’. [1]  This perspective seems significant and worthy of more thought yet I have never heard it taken up or discussed.

An apparently more harmless liturgical expression of this sentimentalisation of liturgy is illustrated by the postscript some clergy add to the blessing:  …And the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit be with you and those whom you love, now and forever.  On the face of it this is good.  Who could object?  People like it.  Those who attend only when they have to – baptisms, funerals - especially like it.  It is inclusive and encouraging and human.  All true, I suppose.  But what is its unintentional effect?  To make God a chum who likes the people we like.  And what about that bastard down the road, or the registered sex offender, or the Colonel Gaddafi's of this world?  I take the pronouncing of liturgical blessings seriously, and with the same intensity I recoil at those people who unctuously say Bless you! in conversation. I know, I know: I am first cousin to Victor Meldrew.  Bless him!  But I believe there is a serious point here.  Perhaps it is that God is neither partial nor a feel-good god, one we must not trivialise.

[1] Messing with the Mass: The problem of priestly narcissism today. Paul Vitz & Daniel C. Vitz. Though written from a Roman Catholic perspective the insights apply elsewhere to liturgical activity. See also here in the blog A New Parson's Handbook

A thought came into my head just now, that ‘worship’ really never occurs in church, and that what is called ‘worship’ in church is more like the short-cut on a modern computer’s ‘desktop’ – a cipher, a link to something actually sitting (and happening) elsewhere.  I see that this is not an entirely satisfactory view, but it is, I think, fruitful.  ‘True’ worship – or maybe I should say immediate, responsive, purposeful and unselfconscious worship – occurs in and through our engagement with life, and that (let’s be honest) happens outside the church-as-building far more than inside it.  Think of the numberless moments in life when we act responsibly and conscientiously and generously out of care, wonder, responsibility, delight and truth.