Your Calling, Here and Now with Dr. Gordon Smith

In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Gordon T. Smith to explore what it means to live faithfully in the here and now.

Gordon invites us to move beyond nostalgia and “what ifs,” and instead pay attention to the real circumstances of our lives—the places where God is already at work. Together, we talk about vocation as something deeper than career, the challenge of saying no, the importance of self-knowledge, and why learning to be present might be the most important spiritual practice of all.

We also reflect on how our calling unfolds over time—not as a straight line, but as a thread that runs through every season of life.

This conversation is both grounding and freeing—especially if you’re navigating transition, wrestling with purpose, or trying to discern what faithfulness looks like in your everyday life.

Gordon will be joining us in Victoria for the Called and Formed conference alongside Mark Buchanan on May 8–9.

👉 Learn more and register 

Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:15

Welcome to Coastal Theology, a podcast from the Vancouver Island School of Theology and the Arts. We explore how Christian faith, learning, and creativity flourish on Vancouver Island and how you can be part of the story.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Welcome, Vista listeners. Today on the podcast, Vanessa and I are really glad to welcome Dr. Gordon Smith. Gordon serves as the executive director for Christian Higher Education Canada, and many of you will know his work through his writing and teaching on vocation, spiritual formation, and the life of the church. He's also a teaching fellow at Regent College and previously served as president of Ambrose University. Gordon is joining us here in Victoria for Vista's upcoming Called Informed Conference, happening May 8th and 9th at Victoria Alliance Church. Alongside author and pastor Mark Buchanan, he'll be helping us explore what it really means to live out our calling in the midst of everyday work and life transitions. This conference is all about rediscovering vocation, not just as a job or career, but as participation in the life and mission of Christ. From rethinking the meaning of our work to recovering the gift of Sabbath as something that actually shapes and renews our calling. It's going to be a rich couple of days. So in this conversation, we're diving into some of those themes: calling, discernment, life rhythm, and what it looks like to live faithfully in the meantime of our lives. So here's our conversation with Gordon Smith.

SPEAKER_01 1:55

Okay, so clearly he was not ready.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

So we'll just pick it up in that minute six minutes.

unknown 2:01

Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

We're very meandering in our podcast interviews. I can handle that. So it's just more like we it's just like we're having a conversation. We accidentally pressed record. Sustenance. You've got what you need to do. Relax. I'll try to relax. Yeah, you relax. You relax. Vanessa and I are both. I don't know if you subscribe to the Enneagram, but we're both nines.

SPEAKER_01 2:24

I don't know. I think I don't know what I am.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

We're we're is it peacemakers? Peacekeepers?

SPEAKER_01 2:29

Julie knows what I am.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

So she's your wife knows what you are? The fact that you don't know what you are probably tells should tell us what number you are. But I can't really remember. I'm so self-absorbed with my number that I don't really study anybody else's.

SPEAKER_05 2:41

When your wife says she knows what you are, is it like with a smirk or like a neutral face?

SPEAKER_01 2:49

Well, she knows the kinds of things I like to avoid, the kinds of situations I don't like to get myself caught into. Okay. Um I'm not sure what what she has in mind. Okay. Anyways.

SPEAKER_05 3:01

Well, I'll guess this entire conversation without talking about it.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 3:05

What I want to say before as we start, welcome, Gordon. Thank you. Yeah. It's so nice to have you in person.

SPEAKER_00 3:13

Yeah, that's rare. Is he her first in-person interview? Yes.

SPEAKER_01 3:19

It's not a small thing. I'm I'm I'm an analog person. Um I was really grateful that our board chair at Ambrose University, after the pandemic, most board members no longer wanted to fly to Calgary for board meetings. They said, no, we'll meet online. Debbie said, Absolutely not. If you're not there, you're not part of the board meeting, why don't you resign? She understood. It's you know, we're in a boardroom like this, and we're gonna go for coffee, and then we're gonna argue, and then we're gonna hug, and we're gonna, you know, reconcile, and it's a tangible sacramental thing. So so I'm so as soon as we were we were corresponding.

SPEAKER_05 3:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:59

And I just thought, you know, I didn't know the weather was gonna be so good. It is nice. But I thought, I can do this, I can just get on a ferry. And if they put it at 2 30 in the afternoon, then I'm on the midday ferry, I get in, I drive down here, park, and I go back on the 4 30 ferry.

SPEAKER_05 4:18

Wait, you came to Victoria for us?

SPEAKER_01 4:21

No, for for whoever is the podcast recipients. You weren't already here? No. Oh. Wow. No, this the in-person matters.

SPEAKER_05 4:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:33

That's what I'm trying to tell people. Get on a plane and fly to Calgary for the board meeting. Yes. And stay in a hotel. And then the next day we're gonna have a meal together. Yes.

SPEAKER_05 4:42

So well, I uh thank you for taking a ferry here because we just had a 10-minute conversation in the lobby that we would not have had on Zoom, I don't think. Precisely. And it was so great.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

And well, it we and we don't know those serendipities. No, these can't be choreographed. Um for sure. So that's what it dawned on me. You and I were doing the email exchange. Maybe Vanessa was being copied. But it dawned on me, um, do you do this kind of thing in person? So I just thought, yeah, I could do it. Come to town for the date.

SPEAKER_00 5:18

Yeah, we just all we had to do is hook up a third microphone.

SPEAKER_01 5:22

We're in.

SPEAKER_05 5:23

Now I think we might be ruined for the visual interviews.

SPEAKER_00 5:28

No, we just say that people have to come to Victoria.

SPEAKER_05 5:31

Yeah. If you want the honor of talking to us.

SPEAKER_00 5:33

Gordon Smith's at the standard. No. We don't we don't do it.

SPEAKER_01 5:37

I'll be the only guest. I'll be back again in a month. So yes, I came to Victoria for the day. And actually it didn't. I wasn't on the early morning ferry. Part of why I asked for 2 30 was so that I could be on the late morning ferry and spend the morning doing other things.

SPEAKER_05 5:53

I like hearing you say that when you there there's nothing like the magic of closing a classroom door. Something like that. And just remembering being a student in person and how fun that was.

SPEAKER_01 6:09

Even when I was a university president um early in my tenure, all of the doors had to have glass cut out of them for a number of reasons. You don't have to go into the details on that. Once all that glass was done, I could walk down the hall and just glance through the glass window and see the professor that I had recruited and see the students that the enrollment people had recruited, and just to think, oh, I was part of making this happen. Yes. I don't need to be in on the magic. It's just I know that when that door is closed, they have an extraordinary opportunity for shared learning. And not all the professors get it. Some of them just know how to read their notes and whatever. But when they know when they when there's a good teacher, yeah, it's transformative. Anyways.

Calling Without “If Only”

SPEAKER_05 6:54

Okay. So something I'm thinking about is how your vocation book is about discerning your calling in the here and now.

SPEAKER_00 7:06

It's called your calling here and now.

SPEAKER_05 7:07

Right.

SPEAKER_00 7:08

Um, making sense of vocation.

SPEAKER_05 7:10

Yes, I have it in my backpack. And already I just feel like you're very here and now in kind of a literal way, because you're actually here and not on Zoom. And also symbolically, what you're talking about or metaphorically, seems to be very much about the being where you are.

SPEAKER_01 7:35

It seems to me uh an imperi- I have two profound dislikes. One of them is nostalgia. I think it is useless, it's a distraction, it's toxic. Um, it's wishing for a previous time, which, you know, how do I say as gently as I can, those times have passed. So I'm a Bob Dylan fan fan. I love, I mean, I've just I just it's it's bread in my bone. 1963, the times they are are changing. Um I I'm just I'm so grateful for the way his music in general, but that particular, and the arts in particular, call us to be present to the here and now. So um I have very little um appreciation for nostalgia, and I also have little appreciation for wishful thinking. So when I teach on discernment at Regent, I always begin with um it's it's it's at this time and in this place that we're going to discern. You may wish you weren't divorced and remarried, but you are divorced and remarried. You may wish your house hadn't burned, but uh it did. You may wish that your first child miscarried. You may wish that. If only. And so we say the language if only, and it's wasted energy. Uh there's a place for lament, there's a place to mourn, there's a place to acknowledge to feel the full force of the fragmentation of our world in all the ways it might intersect our lives. And we feel either we're victims of our own choices, I wish I had not done that stupid thing, or victims of the choices of, as often as not, our parents, our forefathers and mothers, um, more than one generation potentially, and to say, in light of what is actually the case, um, what is it we are called to be and do? Um don't please don't hear fatalism in that, que será será, because there's none of that in there. What's in there is a sense of every no situation is inherently hopeless. So it's in light of what is actually the case that we then pray the prayer. I mean, this is the staggering prayer of the apostle, now to him who's able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine. What a breathtaking prayer. Because it means we always consistently underestimate the grace of God. So um, so how how now is grace supposed to intersect my life and my circumstances without any if only, without any if-onies and without any nostalgia?

Multifaith Canada And Peacemaking

SPEAKER_05 10:10

Doesn't this sound surprising to hear from a Christian? I mean, it's the most Christian thing in the world in a way, but when I'm listening to you, I what I hear you saying is reality is an ally, and something about that feels different to me.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

Fair enough. Well, there's I mean it it is, I mean, there's changes that I wish had not happened. Yeah. So I mean, I don't um I'll I'll give an illustration of that, but I'll start with the positives. So in my in my world, in my culture, my religious social subculture, we are uh Canada is uh uh dominated by people of European descent. Um we are not racist, we insist, but this is our country, and our default mode is people of European descent. Uh when in actual fact Canada is one of the most immigrant-friendly nations in the world. In fact, it may well be one of the most immigrant-friendly nations in the world. And I think that's that's right. It's the way it should be. The epicenter of global mission has moved to the global south, and now the global south has come to Canada. So, but I'm part of a religious subculture that wants Muslims to stay in the Middle East, please. Don't build a mosque down the street from us. Um, when I was a university student in the 70s, I would have had no idea where a mosque was. I'm sure there was one in Canada, but I wouldn't know where it was. Whereas I've been the president of Ambrose University for 12 years, the largest building close to us is a mosque. Every student at that university knows where there's a mosque. And for what it's worth, the food there is extraordinary. So every year, a bunch of undergraduates who go there for a day to be exposed to in a very gracious, winsome, humorous way, to a Muslim imam, Shiite, and he feeds them, tells them evangelical jokes, and lowers the anxiety level about having people have another religious tradition down the street. And my point is this is the future of Canada. And I want to say this is not a problem. This is actually providential. So that in the providence of God, God brought a Muslim down the street from you. So I don't mean to be harsh, but get used to it. Um and if Canada can pull this off, we're a light to the nations. A light to Minneapolis, a light to Houston right now, huge tensions in Houston right now with Hindus. And I wish they wouldn't build uh that what what the Hindus have done in Houston, come on, guys. Any more than I'm gonna put up a cross in your face. Don't, you know, kind of build bridges. But what's happening with the Somalian community in Minneapolis is just deeply grievous. And I grieve in part because it's happening um with the endorsement of my religious subculture. We don't want Muslims here. So number five road in Richmond, BC, are you familiar with number five road? No. Just across the waters. Do you cross the waters? Yeah. So number five road is the highway to heaven or religion road, different, but it's a Hindu temple, a Buddhist temple, a Sikh temple, Muslim mosque, Jewish community center, the whole I mean, all every major religion is represented down that one. It's it's like about a kilometer. It's amazing. Wow. And I want to say this is the future of Canada. And if we can pull this off, it is um, well, I hope we can pull it off. But it has been pulled off. I mean, I I was supposed to have spent the last month in Lebanon. I'm still in in mourning that that had to be canceled. So the war began on the Saturday, the bombing of Iran, and then on the Sunday, the bombing of South Lebanon, and on Monday I got the text from Martin Akkad saying, Gordon, you can't come. And so my flight, which was scheduled for Wednesday, March 4th, was canceled. Um, and then I was going to spend a whole month there with only one agenda to learn from Christians in Lebanon. What does it mean to thrive as a Christian community when there's Shiites, Sunnis, Druze, Maronites all around you? And you're living with them in harmony, and you're you're mastering the art of peacemaking and reconciliation, and you're actually, to the, to my complete amazement, you're standing between Shiites and Sunnis as an instrument of peace between them. Talk about a testimony to the to the in-breaking of the reign of God. Um and you're not bringing peace between you and them, because they all get along with you, but between them and the Christians become then have this catalytic role. I wanted to see this. And two weeks ago I was supposed to be going with Martin down to Sidon to have lunch with both a Shiite and a Sunni Imam. They were going to host us. I had met them in 2018, so they were all keen for me to come back and then had to cancel that. So I'm I'm carrying that as I come with you today.

SPEAKER_03 15:05

Right.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

But I wanted to learn from Lebanon how to be better Canadian. What does it mean to be a minority presence and not have an adversary relationship to the culture around us, which is what I grew up with.

SPEAKER_05 15:23

Okay, one of my questions was what you what your current sense of calling is, because in your book you you give a lot of permission for it to change and evolve depending on real circumstances and stage of life and everything. So I wondered, I wonder what Gordon's you know calling is right now, or what factors influence it. Something I'm hearing is how to be a Canadian is on your mind. Um, as well as interreligious relationships and dialogue and living together. Is any of us true?

SPEAKER_01 16:01

So um uh I think all of us are multi-vocational. At the very least, co no, I said bye, and then I was corrected, it's co, and then I've been told more recently it's multi, okay. You know, gender. We have to we have to kind of get the right political language. Um most of us are multi-vocational. I'm a grandfather. I'm part-time the executive director of an association of for Christian higher education. I teach part-time at Regent College, but the there's a core, and the core is writing. And I think uh I made the joke earlier about Mark Buchanan, because for me the problem with that is that Mark's a writer. So I'm really hesitant to say hello. I'm a writer too.

SPEAKER_05 16:45

Oh, that would be two writers?

SPEAKER_01 16:48

Oh, yeah, but no, I mean Mark's the writer. And I'm I I'm uh I'm not a hack, but um I'm not I'm not there's I have been hesitant to self-identify as a writer because I'm friends with Mark Buchanan, who everybody knows is a writer. Oh, like Mark? No, not like Mark. He's a writer. And if you send anything you've written to him and then he sends it back with his suggested edits, it just reinforces that maybe you're not a writer and you're wasting his time and your time, and go get a job that you're actually good at. Um so, Vanessa, my response to your question is I'm writing.

SPEAKER_05 17:24

Yeah, that's you said the core is writing.

SPEAKER_01 17:27

A thousand words a day.

SPEAKER_05 17:28

Really? Wow.

SPEAKER_01 17:30

Sometimes more, sometimes less. No, never less. A minimum of a thousand words a day. So I do a Substack. I have a major publication uh on the Ascension came out six months ago. I have a piece coming out uh on the metaphors of the Christian life, which I'm hugely invested in, including this would interest, I think, both of you. How do we think about the metaphor of sickness and healing? Um, and I think my vineyard Pentecostal alliance holiness tradition that only viewed healing as I've been diagnosed with cancer. Could you please lay hands on me? I no longer have cancer, God's miraculous work that in actual fact we're all sin-sick souls. So we're talking through the lens of John of the Cross and others about what deep healing looks like. So that's a major project. And then I've got two smaller projects, which I'm very excited about, one of which we will announce at the conference with Vista on uh calling to pastoral office. Um I I'm surprised at how invested I am in that, but I I celebrate the women and men who in midlife and in mid-career, these are not Jonas. It's not like they miss their calling, but in mid-career recognize the potential that they are called to a priestly pastoral office. And how do we provide theological formation for that? And how do we incorporate them into congregational life? When, as Rich Leonard Lamb, my dear friend, who fits this category, put it, uh, your opening day, you've been a he is an accomplished business executive. And then he says, I went to seminary and then I'm a rookie in my mid to late 40s. I'm just when you think you're an accomplished, whatever it is you do. Yeah. So I'm um I'm intrigued by that. And then uh I'm also publishing a book entitled To Be an Elder, subtitled Vocation in Our Senior Years. So both of those are due out in about uh six weeks. But they're smaller projects, and then I write articles and essays and things like that.

SPEAKER_05 19:36

You sound like a legitimate writer.

SPEAKER_01 19:38

Well, in terms of doing it, yes. Whether the product is is um passes mustard, I don't know. But I am a good writer when I have a good editor. And there's a really, really good editor in this city, um, uh Bethany Murphy, and she well, she's a master.

SPEAKER_04 19:59

Oh.

SPEAKER_01 20:00

And what I like about her is I don't lose my voice, I find my voice. What I like, yeah. No, I fear she, you know, you pay her, but that's her job. But she's very good. She goes to St. Barnabas. So Regent College used to have a journal called Crux. Okay. I grieve that it's no longer there, but she was the editor for Crux. Cool, okay. Uh based here in Victoria. So I'm writing, and I'm writing it to the best of my abilities, and I'm reading every book I can get my hands on on writing. And I'm stunned by I I wish I had the quote in front of me, that you learn how to write all of your life and then you die. Nobody ever masters the art. And so that encourages me that even Mark needs to work on some things of my opinion. And the only reason I mention all that about Mark is because you've already met him. Yes, he was wonderful. That was the last episode. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 20:49

Yeah. Um, so I was reading through your book this last week, you're calling here and now. And it's I've read a lot of um, you know, the classic getting things done. Um, uh Cal Newport has a lot of books out on like how to how to work, like it's productivity. It's like the nuts and bolts every day. And they kind of pay, you know, lip service or to like, hey, there's kind of the bigger picture, what are your goals and all that, but they don't spend time there. And it just made me think reading your book, you're you're coming at it from this big picture. Who am I? What does it mean to be human? What is what am I called by God to do given where I am at and um who I am and all that mixture of stuff. And it was it was a nice because I haven't read as much of that. And so because you could be really you could be really good at, okay, I can get through my day, I can check all the things, I can get really good at my GTD. But then if the larger question is, is what I'm doing actually worthwhile? This becomes the much for me, the much harder question, much more difficult question to wrestle with. What are the things I say no to? So I found it very helpful to To exclude that again. And and and it's similarly, you wrote a book a while back called The Voice of Jesus, which was one of my favorites, and I've lent that out and had to rebuy it many times over, which is a great um uh kind of looking at different Christian traditions, Jonathan Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, and Ignatius, I think. Um and how these different traditions, there's all this overlap to kind of talk about how do we hear the voice of Jesus in our everyday life here and now. I find that tremendously helpful. Anyway, there's not a question in there. I just wanted to say I liked it. Good. So good writing.

SPEAKER_01 22:36

Well, part of why I um invested as much energy as I did over the last decade and finally was grate glad to get the book published in the fall on the ascension, is trying to make the case for in a post-Christian secular age, post-Christendom, it is an imperative that we not depend on culture to kind of carry our freight, but that we affirm the potential for an immediate relationship with Christ. However, much I grew up with, you can know Jesus personally. In actual fact, it was cultural Christianity. So I have learned as much as anything from Ignatius Layola, John of the Cross, and Teresa Vavila of the potential for an immediate relationship with the risen and ascended Lord.

SPEAKER_00 23:14

That God may actually be speaking to us here and now. You got it. Yeah. Yeah. Which is which just is captures the imagination, like the potential and the possibility for that that God might be speaking to me and giving me some sort of meaningful direction in life. Indeed. It's wonderful.

SPEAKER_01 23:35

Indeed.

SPEAKER_00 23:36

And the converse temptation, just kind of be caught up in a flow of culture. Or stuff that culture. Yeah.

Concentric Circles And Saying No

SPEAKER_01 23:47

The sense of urgency of to get stuff done. That's right. Just going back to Vanessa's question about how things unfold, um, it's not that my vocation changed. It's just that the vehicle for implementing what I'm called to do is changed from an academic administrator to a writer. I still um deeply invested in the ways in which the faith community lives out its faith in a post-Christian secular age. And I was interested in doing that as a university administrator. I'm interested in doing that as a teacher, and I'm interested in doing it as a writer. But I think, I think in here and now, I quote Tom Ryan. If I didn't, I should have. He's really the source for me on this, is the whole idea of concentric circles. Yeah. Um, and I found when when Father Ryan gave me that image, he was my spiritual director, and he was just, he just rolled his eyes at this evangelical who's trying to kind of fix the world by this weekend. Uh your busy, busy bodies, and you think you're so cool because you observe Sabbath. He says, your whole life is frenetic between Sabbaths. So, no, there's this there wasn't a rhythm or a leisure or a pattern that made any sense to him. So he urged me to think in terms of concentric circles. And you're not going to get everything done that you'd like to get done. So you you the two things, one you've alluded to, one is what's at the core? What on any given day do I need to do? So there's no two ways around it. I schedule this as to the degree that you are willing in the afternoon, so that I could spend this morning doing what I must do. Kind of uh the you know, the Martha to Mary or Jesus about Mary to Martha. Leave her alone for goodness sake. She's attending to what she needs to do. This is the one thing necessary. So at each stage of my life to be able to say, what is the one thing necessary? Although I think it unfolds. So in this time and in this place, what is the one thing necessary? And and in actual fact, it doesn't take all that much time. Uh it doesn't consume, it's not all consuming. So I can be a grandfather, I can teach part-time, I can go into Victoria and spend time with the two of you and talk about the things that matter to us and still get my thousand words in. And forgive the thousand words, but it's just I I I I it gives me a sense of I'm on task. Um, and sometimes there are thousand words that the next day I just gotta walk over and shred it. And you know, and it's therapeutic and there it went with that awful noise from the shredder. I could have it could have at least shredded it nicely rather than so harshly. Sometimes it's that, but every day to be in that task so that so that writing doesn't become onerous. Um and I don't fear because I shred every so often, I know I don't have to, this is not the last draft. There's no weight. And it just, oh, that's just liberating. Yeah. So what's that? And then the other one, and you alluded to it, maybe you didn't allude to, maybe you stated directly, is the capacity to say no. And I I I grew up in a religious subculture that you don't say no. Yeah. So and I have to deal with this with my housemate, my wife, to all of them. She says, So why are you going to Smithers? Right. So I'm going to Smithers in two weeks. And I'm going now, and I will be, I will be as good as I know how to be with them. But there's no doubt there's a side of me that says that would have fit in the category of a nice little N-O. You're very kind to invite me. I would be honored to go, but unfortunately, I'm a grandfather. Unfortunately, unfortunately. Um I I should I I'm not saying I should have said no, but this could easily fit in the category of no. And it goes back to why did you say yes? Um and so the being clear about what I must do and having freedom to say what do I not need to do? Where can I say no?

SPEAKER_00 27:34

I I don't know if this is a universal thing or if it's a me thing, but I feel like that is one of the hardest things to master is is saying is learning to say no. And maybe it's the nines in us or me anyway, uh, is learning to say no to good things.

SPEAKER_01 27:47

Yeah, deal with our own stuff.

SPEAKER_00 27:50

Uh the the ability to say no to good things that I that I want to do. That's part of the problem. It's maybe in that second or even that third concentric circle. It's like that would be so fun, or that would be so life. There's there's some sort of nuance there of okay, what's crosses the threshold between life-giving and generative, and and God is calling me to do this versus, oh, that would be really enjoyable, but probably probably a no. And I think that's that's hard for me to wrestle with. And I find I've by the end of the day, I've usually said yes to too many things.

SPEAKER_01 28:21

And what's what's then most helpful for me in the Ignatian spiritual tradition is to then play the tape back and to say, why did I say yes when I should have said no? And that's um that's as often as not something we wrestle with in the privacy of our own thoughts and prayers and confession.

SPEAKER_02 28:38

Right.

SPEAKER_01 28:39

To say, um, although Joel, my wife is more than happy to say, I know why you said yes. And uh that's hurtful.

unknown 28:48

No.

SPEAKER_01 28:49

Um but uh to know why we said yes. Yeah. Yeah. And then to be able to check that because we wanted the praise, the acclaim, the honorarium, the whatever it is, the power that came with that, the reputation. We wanted it to go into our CV, whatever, whatever, what whatever might have motivated it.

Self-Knowledge And The Buffered Self

SPEAKER_00 29:07

Yeah. But if I say yes to too many things, I don't have any time to do ignation spirituality. So I'm stuck. I'm gonna read something from chapter two that really stuck out to me. It may well be the greatest obstacle to being fully present to the here and now is the failure to know oneself, the inability to see oneself truthfully. I think that really struck me. It's a key well, how would you unpack that a little for us? Is that a key part of discernment is knowing myself, especially in a I don't know if it's time and place or if it's just a human condition of not wanting to know myself, distract myself from the truth of who I am.

SPEAKER_01 29:51

So there's a very um a long um a long thread in the um theological and spiritual tradition of which we are all three of us a part. And that long thread go, I mean, it's actually affirmed even by the ancient Greeks that there is no there's no wisdom except there's wisdom that is marked by self-knowledge. The difference that our our spiritual heritage makes is that it's deeply profoundly intertwined with the knowledge of God and the knowledge of self. So um John Calvin opens the Calvin's Institutes with the knowledge of God and the knowledge of our humanity. And then Teresa Vavila, I almost know exactly the page because it's so marked up. She talks about, and these are these are contemporaries. Teresa and Calvin are contemporaries. They've never met. Well, maybe they have now in the kingdom that is yet to come, but they had not met, but they're writing that saying the same thing. You do not know God unless you know yourself, and you do not know yourself unless you know God. The knowledge of God and the knowledge of self are so intertwined that if you are lying to yourself, you're lying to God. You're pretending to God, you're living by pretense. The only way to live with genuine transparency before God is to no longer wish you were anybody other than who God made when God made you. This is humility for Teresa. Yeah. Um and um and then uh in the 19th century, Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov, and it comes up twice in there where Father Aliosha just says, stop lying to yourself. And and the weight of it is that this is one of the great sins, is the failure to speak to your own self in truth. But that's putting it negatively, but you almost need both sides of it. The positive side is this is freedom for Teresa. I no longer need to compare myself to Mark Buchanan. I can just accept who God made when God made me. I think he could have done a slightly better job, but no, I'm teasing. That is to accept who God made when God made me. That that Daghammer straw, that great line, comparisons are odious to see oneself in truth. But we live the the challenge we have, we live in a in a social context not only marked by frenetic busyness, not only marked by distraction, but by this whole phenomena that through Instagram or whatever media I'm gonna use, I'm gonna create a persona. I'm gonna my butt the buffered self, as Charles Taylor puts it. This is the persona that I want you to see. So then we create the buffered self. Um believe the buffered self. And believe the buffered self. And then we reinforce it again and again. And what I would hope is with my two granddaughters, age 16 and 18, that I have a kind of a relationship with them that frees them to be nobody other than who they are with me. So at least I'm one person kind of entering into their life, one of many, entering into their life where they don't need to pretend. Uh and if if that happens, uh it is spectacular. I just, I mean, I'm a grandfather too, a 16-year-old and an 18-year-old girl. I like these people a lot. Uh I just, I just just I can't believe I get to do this. Sheer gift. Yeah, nothing but gift. Uh given that uh I had no relationship with my grandparents, and given that my parents were not a source of blessing and grace to my sons and their daughters and their wives. So to see the see the potential and to actually be able to experience it. Uh the grace of being of intergenerational, uh transcending the the inclination. I think intergenerationality can help us transcend this propensity towards creating a buffered self. So, yes, it's strong within our tradition. And I do though think we learn who we are in community. Yeah. And so what you and I both need, all three of us, pardon me, what we need is people that aren't impressed with who we're trying to create ourselves to be. That actually graciously, may God grant us this grace, graciously accept us for who God for who God made when God made us. And for me, this is um this is true friendship. True friendship is to be in the company of people that actually value you as you. They're not they're not trying to make you into anything else. They enjoy your company and even your foibles, whatever they might be. And they may know where you are on the Enneagram and they live with that. We need that. The company of friends that accept us and love us for who we are and tell us to stop lying to ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 34:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 34:34

I mean, so many things you said were very evocative to me. I've been thinking about this line from Woody Allen the last couple days. I think my husband and I joked about it. He has one line that says, My one regret in life is that I am not somebody else. Which I love because it's like so comprehensive.

SPEAKER_01 34:54

It's too brilliant.

SPEAKER_05 34:55

Yeah. But we say when you and my husband say to each other, My one regret in life is that you're not somebody else. Ooh, ouch. In a funny, we both agree together that it's funny.

SPEAKER_01 35:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 35:07

Um, but I I don't know why I love that so much. It's it's it's the same thing you're talking about, the invitation to kind of radical humility, which is being oneself. And there's another quote from uh Howard Thurman in um Jesus and the Disinherited. He didn't say this, but he quoted, I think, a Russian maybe, and he said, humility cannot be humiliated. And I've been thinking a lot about that in terms of being human. If I can be my human creaturely self, then I I cannot be humiliated. There's like a there's a freedom to that, but as a Christian, for some reason, it's so hard for me to get down to that level. Why I think I early on I I had experiences of like, oh, I don't like this, I'm tired. And I thought, oh, those are bad things. So don't be that. Be happy, be good, be available, say yes. So I'm not gonna cultivate an awareness of some of those difficult and hard bad feelings. I'm just gonna kind of grin and bear them and work through them until I can get to a place where I'm happy and good and available.

SPEAKER_01 36:28

But probably for you, reinforced by the expectation of what girls and young women are supposed to be like within our social, cultural, religious context. Yes.

SPEAKER_05 36:36

Um so I feel I feel very out of touch with kind of that very immediate honesty about myself and who I am, my limitations, my sinfulness. Like I don't have access to that in the same way that non-Christians have it, in the same way kids have it. Just kind of like a laid bare, like a transparency.

SPEAKER_00 36:59

But you see, you're like one of the most honest people I know.

SPEAKER_05 37:01

Really? Yeah. That's like You're always saying things like who says that?

SPEAKER_00 37:06

Who who admits those things?

SPEAKER_05 37:08

Because I'm working on this. So you but I lament that it doesn't come easier to me to be to stop lying to myself and to just be a needy person.

SPEAKER_00 37:25

That reminds me of the the Lent you gave up lying a few years ago.

SPEAKER_05 37:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:31

She gave up lying for Lent, one Lent. A few Lents. Which which I never heard anyone else. That is unique. To put because the giving up lying for Lent is itself a confession. It is.

SPEAKER_05 37:47

Of course. Yes. All it did for me, not all, but it made me aware of how many times I lie. So I it it was an examine of sorts to help highlight all the times in the day when I am tempted towards not saying what I mean.

SPEAKER_00 38:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 38:08

And so rather than not lying, I just noted. I took note of all.

SPEAKER_01 38:14

But not everything needs to be said.

SPEAKER_05 38:16

No, of course not.

SPEAKER_01 38:17

Um it's the it's the pretense, it's the living by a facade that I think needs to be challenged. The double life. The double life and the capacity then to discern vocation, if it is deeply if if God's call in my life is deeply congruent with how God has wired me and made me, then that self-knowledge is imperative in my capacity to discern the voice of Jesus and what I'm called to be and do now. Um And maybe I I I make it a joke, but maybe really it is not rooted in the good, the noble, and the excellent for me to compare myself with Mark. Um so I I use I it it it is humor, without doubt.

SPEAKER_05 39:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:00

Meant to be, oh my goodness, you were talking to Mark now, I'm feeling intimidated. But um, and and I'll grant that possibility for myself, but I'm I mean, I grew up all my whole, all of my upbringing, my father underwhelmed by me. My father wishing I was somebody else. So I can blame him. And when I get to the kingdom that is yet to come and they're letting me in, I hope they let me in and say, Gordon, you've got some issues. I say, Yeah, I've got some issues, but you can blame my father, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 39:37

Um getting back to those concern concentric rings. And I and it made me think of something, and maybe it's not connected, but I'm thinking about that that center ring is like you you characterize it what's that?

SPEAKER_05 39:53

Okay, you go. I was gonna answer it for you.

SPEAKER_00 39:57

The um what you need to get done, uh not the the essentials, non-negotiables. Sometimes it's what you need to do to pay the rent to keep things going.

SPEAKER_01 40:08

That's that's a Mark Buchanan line. Yeah. And it's a good line. What pays the rent? Yeah. And sometimes you have to pay the rent. Right.

SPEAKER_00 40:14

That's okay. So I think I think like my age, my generation, it's survive, like figure out, okay, what do we need to get things done? Fake it till you make it. Okay, we'll we'll find, we'll be responsible and all this stuff. And then there's there's sort of this for some managers and supervisors and leaders for the next generation. There's this sense of is is do they have that first concentric circle, or are they chasing that second concentric circle? Do you know what I mean? And what would you made me think of that framework? Like uh, because I have these ambitions, like, oh, I wish I more time to read, or or if if you know, a thousand thousand words a day is maybe not, it's that's not to pay the rent, but that's that's that second circle, maybe would you say that where you're at with like this is important to me, it's part of my calling, but it it's if I don't do it one day, it's not the end of the world, or like these other things over here. And so there can be this critique of a younger generation where you're trying to, you know, these entry-level positions and you're trying to manage and and that what would you say to leaders who are trying to lead well and supervise those that maybe don't recognize that first concentric circle, or we're not on the same page. Well, I think what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_01 41:34

Yeah, I think having the circles, at least it it creates the possibility for a conversation to say, what are you saying no to? Why does why is this taking up time? Why are you feeling this? Why why this frenetic rushing around? Why this seemingly inability to do what you need to do today? What's what's causing what's the pause between that? Um so I mean, all the time that I was a president of university, I'm writing every day from 7 to 8 a.m. I'm not answering email. I'm up, I have my morning coffee and prayers and the psalm, and then from seven to eight, I'm at my desk and content with that. So now it's much more of my life, but all the time that I was university president, I was writing for an hour a day. Not a thousand words, that's fine, but every day for an hour. Whatever it that time it was more time restricted rather than number of words. Um but it but it was set it was second order. So if we had a board meeting or a board retreat, I didn't do writing that day. And I didn't feel badly. Oh, woe was me, I didn't get my writing done. Uh I was well aware that it was second second order. Um and I like to think that even now as a grandfather, that is such an important part of my social, familial system network, that every so often it moves heart right front in the center. And when I was a university president, I couldn't.

unknown 42:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:58

But I can now.

SPEAKER_00 42:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:00

So I can take a whole day to say I'm going to Nanaimo to visit with Karis. And oh, I love it. And I don't feel badly that this, this, and this got missed. But it's a season of life where I can let that come front and center when it needs to, and where there's a provision. I want to meet with my son this afternoon. This I'm going to do this. This matters. In fact, being a father now is matters to me as much as it ever did. So I will find ways and means by which that will happen and let that move into the center. And I have the flexibility in my life when it does, in a way that when you have when I am paying the rent and I don't get a pension, um, was less possible. Um even then I was teaching part-time. I resolved even when I became a president, most presidents stop teaching. I think that's a mistake. Um and um uh I think they should stay in the classroom because then you keep you keep present to the very thing this whole institution is about so that after and after five years. Years you you lose a sense of how this works. And then you retire and nobody wants you to teach. And I retired and Regent wanted me to teach because I can teal I can still do that. So those the that second circle became more the inner circle in this stage, going back to your question earlier in terms of my how my own vocation has evolved. Yeah. But I don't I I I I don't think it's so much it's changed, although I have a couple of examples where it's a little awkward, and that one of them being Moses. Uh his kind of mid-career transition, which is he's 80. Yeah. But so we don't think of it as mid-career. Um, and he's doing really good shepherding, yeah, as far as we know. Yeah. The sheep are happy, and then he reads and you know has the burning bush thing, and now suddenly, whoa, we're doing this for the next 40 years. Uh, but I suspect that if we have a chance to have a coffee or whatever beverage you prefer to have with Moses in the kingdom that is yet to come, he will say, Oh no, no, there's a thread uh all the way through. Yeah. Um and in in many respects, the the sheep caring was a waiting time, a season of this is what I was called to do, but it it it it wasn't called for yet. Uh so it's not so much my vocation changed, it's now I was caring for sheep and hopefully learning a few things along the way, doing that. Right.

SPEAKER_00 45:24

Yeah, you well, you talk about that with in the the mid-career shift, noting people shifting midlife. Um and you bring up the point about again what you've just said, what you've said about it's not like as if you missed your calling or God just decided to tell you at this point. It's more yeah, season of preparation. Like there's there's things you can find in your and I guess maybe that's hard for for a lot of us to see is it or was it a waste all these years? But I got the sense that there's something exciting about that kind of shift that brings a fresh perspective to this new like you're a rookie now in this new field, but you're bringing all this other kinds of experience that maybe not everyone else is bringing or perspective.

SPEAKER_01 46:15

So for an for a speaking to this, for a Nelson Mandela, yeah, you know, all those years in solitary confinement in that prison in South Africa comes out, two years later, he's the president of the republic.

SPEAKER_00 46:29

Yeah.

No Wasted Time In God’s Hands

SPEAKER_01 46:29

He didn't kind of go through supervisor and then manager and then vice president and then president. He didn't kind of work up the career chain. Yeah. But somehow that experience formed him in such a way that and and when he what so powerfully moved me is after he became president and South Africa was involved in the finals of rugby, and the entire team is white South Africans, yeah, and he decides this is our team. So all of these black South Africans are not going to go watch the white South Africans in the final of the World Cup, which they are hosting in in Johannesburg. And he says, No, we're going, they're our team. I think all of that was formed in solitary confinement. In a in a I mean, he's just in a grace-filled way. Yeah. So there there is the great line from T.S. Eliot, with God, there is no wasted time. Yeah. Uh to say what is percolating. Yeah. If that is that the right word I want? I think so, rather than distilling. Maybe both words work. But what is percolating that may kind of unfold later on?

SPEAKER_00 47:31

It makes me think of Paul, who is obviously doing something wrong, and yet by the grace of God, his zeal, his his knowledge of the law, all that comes to bear on his Christian life and his apostles.

SPEAKER_01 47:44

So I use I use Paul, um, I don't use him as often as I think I should. I think right out of the gate on the road to Damascus, right away, he knew he was called to preach the gospel to the Gentiles. He knew this is radical. Even though I'm a Jew, the Gentile is going to be my brother. He knew it so quickly. He spent three years in the Judean desert. Barnabas comes to find him, and then he's fighting for that with the people back in with the other apostles. Yeah. Peter giving him huge grief. Even when he's doing, even when he's doing um uh fundraising with the Ethiop, with the Ephesian congregation and the Philippine congregation, he's raising money for the mission to the Gentiles. And then he's going to Rome and he writes to the Romans to get the Gentiles and the Jews to get along together because they need to get along together before we take the gospel to Spain. And it's all that's the thread that runs through the whole thing. Even though the focus, the the um the the the where he's investing energy shifts, but the underlying motivation is the same. That's what I'm trying to say. So I think in some ways, when I'm writing, yeah, the underlying motivation is the same as when I was a university administrator, yeah. And it's the same as when I was a professor in a class, and so on.

SPEAKER_05 48:59

Do you know that our time is a minute past when you said you needed to go?

SPEAKER_01 49:04

It's time to go.

SPEAKER_05 49:05

It's 3 51.

SPEAKER_01 49:06

Oh.

SPEAKER_05 49:07

But can I tell you one thing? You may I read I read your first book in 2013 and then another one in 2014 because I was going to spiritual direction training with Will Hernandez.

SPEAKER_01 49:21

Oh, really? And tomorrow, maybe you told me that.

SPEAKER_05 49:23

I'm going to Manila. And you've been in Manila. I'm going to Baguio tomorrow to be with this community.

SPEAKER_01 49:31

Wow. So who's hosting you in Baguio?

SPEAKER_05 49:35

It's it's CenterQuest, our spiritual direction training program. The director's Will, I'm his executive assistant.

SPEAKER_01 49:41

I'm just curious what monastery is in Baggio.

SPEAKER_05 49:44

Yeah, it's a monastery on the mountain, but I forget the name.

SPEAKER_01 49:50

So I was just with I was just in Rome with my son, my other son, not the one I was seeing now. So I asked him, so what do you remember from the Philippines? What are your highlights? Yeah. And he mentioned Sun and Sand, because we love the ocean. And he mentioned a resort that we used to go to, and then he mentioned Baguio. Oh. And we used to stay at the Lutheran cottages in Bagugio.

SPEAKER_05 50:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 50:10

That was um a highlight for him as a kid.

SPEAKER_05 50:12

Wow. I'll know what you're talking about once I drive there.

SPEAKER_01 50:16

5,000 feet, pine trees. Yes. It doesn't feel like the tropics.

Conference Invitation And Closing

SPEAKER_05 50:20

Yes, I'm excited. Okay, thank you, Gordon.

SPEAKER_00 50:24

Gordon Smith, thank you for being here in person, in the flash. Our first real life interview. All the rest could have been AI, we wouldn't have known. But we know that you are not. And uh Gordon Smith's coming with Mark Buchanan May 8th. Oh, sorry, May 5th, May 8th, 9th, and 10th. Yeah? Yeah. Yeah, May 8th and 9th, uh, for a conference Vista Conference. And you can find out more at our website, and we'll put all that stuff in our notes at the bottom of the podcast. So yeah. If you'd like to go deeper into this conversation, I really want to invite you to join us for the Called Informed Conference with Dr. Gordon Smith and Mark Buchanan, happening May 8th and 9th at Victoria Alliance Church. It's a chance to step back and reflect on your work, your calling, and how God might be meeting you in this season of your life. Whether you're in a time of transition, feeling restless in your work, or simply wanting to reconnect your faith with your everyday life, this is the space to be both challenged and renewed. You can find all the details and register through the Vista website. We'll include the link in the show notes. Thanks for listening.