outWORD by Matte Downey

Phew! Another semester over and done with!  I just handed in my last essay this afternoon.  The topics I was dealing with this term were 1) Hans Urs von Balthasar and the role of the witness (audience participation) in God's drama and 2) Rembrandt's self-portraits as an illustration of Paul Ricoeur's idea of narrative identity.  Very interesting and perhaps I will write about them here at a later date.  This afternoon I am sitting at my desk, enjoying the breeze wafting in from the back balcony, drinking a cup of tea I accidentally added 2 sugars to (oops, got distracted), doing the laundry, baking bread, and trying not to jump right into editing 3 more papers for presentation and publication.  One of the most intriguing and thought-provoking books I read this semester (I always have one non-theology book on the go to read on the subway) was Fire Season by Philip Connors.  I picked it up at a book sale at the university store and was p...

For one of my courses this semester, I have been reading a lot of Paul Ricoeur, a French philosopher.  I am the first to admit that reading Ricoeur is not for the faint of heart.  Fortunately, the long, arduous road through his philosophical meanderings proved to be totally worth it when I got to the last two articles.  One of them was called, "The Summoned Subject in the School of the Narratives of the Prophetic Vocation."  One of the sections in this article explores the topic of vocation.  I pulled out some of his points and fleshed out the ideas for a short talk last Sunday.  Though Ricoeur is using Old Testament prophets as an example, I believe these principles apply to us all. Before I get into Ricoeur's points, let me offer a brief explanation of the term, "vocation."  This word carries a sense of "spiritual calling," and has its root in the same word as "v...