Ep. 329 Karen Swallow Prior Returns - Finding Your Calling in the True, the Good, and the Beautiful

Karen Swallow Prior returns to the podcast to help us rethink what calling really is. It's not a passion we chase or a dream we conjure up, but something that comes from outside of us. Something we respond to. We talk about the slow work of vocation, how it shifts over time, and why pursuing what’s true, good, and beautiful in ordinary life might be the most faithful thing we can do. This conversation is for anyone in the middle of change, trying to find their way, or wondering if the work they’re doing still matters. There’s room for all of it here.

Karen Swallow Prior, Ph.D. is a popular writer and speaker. A former English professor, Karen is now a contributing writer for The Dispatch and a columnist for Religion News Service. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Vox, The Washington Post, Christianity Today, and many other places. Her most recent book is You Have a Calling: Finding Your Vocation in the True, Good, and Beautiful (Brazos 2025).

Karen's Book:

You Have a Calling

Karen's Recommendation:

Small Things Like These

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Transcript

Karen Swallow Prior: 0:00

We can also just luxuriate in the everyday world, in ordinary work, in life with our among our neighbors and our family members. That is where most of the truth, goodness and beauty in the world is to be found, and that is what will draw us closer to God and draw others to him as well. You Hello

Joshua Johnson: 0:33

and welcome to the shifting culture podcast in which we have conversations about the culture we create and the impact we can make. We long as the body of Christ look like Jesus, I'm your host. Joshua Johnson, our culture tells us to look inward, to find ourselves Karen, swallow prior returns to offer a counter narrative, one that reminds us that calling is not something we invent, but something we receive. It's not simply about chasing passion or crafting a personal brand. It's about listening, discerning and responding to the voice that calls us toward what is true, what is good and what is beautiful. Karen helps us reimagine vocation as a lifelong invitation into meaningful work, quiet faithfulness and a deeper communion with God. We explore the shifts that take place across the lifetime, the letting go of dreams that no longer fit, the rediscovery of purpose in unexpected places, the beauty of a calling that evolves. We talk about work, scarcity, abundance, suffering, integrity and the sacredness of everyday life. This isn't a roadmap with six easy steps to find your purpose. It's a thoughtful reflection on how God shapes us over time, through community and how even the most ordinary moments can become holy when rooted in truth, goodness and beauty. Here is my conversation with Karen swallow prior Karen, welcome back to shifting culture. Really excited to have you back on. It's great to be back. Thank you. I'm excited to go in deep into calling and vocation, what is true and good and beautiful. So I wanted to start with the the title of your your book, and we could just jump in from there. It says you have a calling, which is title your book, finding your vocation in the true, good and beautiful. So it sounds like vocation and calling are pretty tied together. What is that for you? Vocation and calling. What does that look like?

Karen Swallow Prior: 2:27

Yeah, so I mean in the book, I use the words interchangeably, because and the main thing that I say about them is that they both require being called by someone or something outside of ourselves. So a lot of times, you'll hear people talk about feeling like they have a calling, or feeling called, which you know that I understand what they mean by that. But often that's talking about a passion, a desire that we have, and ideally in an ideal world, what we desire to do, and what we have a passion to do are this is the same thing that as something that we're called to do by other, by others. But that doesn't always happen. And so in the book, I talk about that, and I'm drawing on decades of teaching college age students who, you know, are asking these questions, but also getting a lot of distorted messages, I think, from the culture about what our work and our callings look like, and how our desires and passions fit into those but it's not just college age people who are wrestling with these questions. More and more people my age and younger and older, you know, mid career or end of career, are grappling with these questions in a very rapidly changing world. And so my basic argument is that we have, you know, callings come from outside of ourselves. And we have multiple callings over the course of our life, and they shift and take different forms and sometimes even end

Joshua Johnson: 3:53

that right there. That calling is going to come outside of ourselves is really difficult in this late modern age that we live in, because everything comes from within, like I'm gonna find who I am, I'm gonna discover myself, and I'm gonna discover my passion, and then I could live out of that. I want to just know about your journey. What did it look like to follow vocation and calling, and what did it look like coming from outside of yourself, and maybe through community and God and and others, rather than just finding something from within yourself, like so many tried to do these days.

Karen Swallow Prior: 4:27

Yeah, and you know, it really is, and I didn't use this in the book, it's just occurring to me now. It really is kind of a dance, right? One partner is that the inner desire and passions and abilities that we have, the dance partner is the calling that comes from outside. And so the dances can look different, and they can be beautiful, or they could be clumsy, or they could be awkward. And so for me, I, you know, as a young person, even though it was a long time ago, I still am a person of the of the late modern age. And so I pursued my passion. Passion for reading literature and studying English and language, I had no desire to teach. In fact, I decided I did not want to be a teacher. I wanted to be many things, but not a teacher. But when I entered the PhD program to pursue my passion of reading and studying literature, that is when I accidentally or providentially discovered, because I had an opportunity to try it that I discovered I was created to teach. I loved teaching. I loved classroom teaching. I still love teaching. And when I you know, as as usual, when I finished my PhD, I went on the job market. It was not a good job market. Then it's even worse now. But I got called. I got the call from the Dean, and then I had a, you know, 25 year teaching career.

Joshua Johnson: 5:47

I mean, for you, you're having 25 year teaching career, moving in and out now, in the last, you know, five, six years as you have, what does that shift look like? How did you say, Oh, this calling may be a little different, but some of what I am called to be in this world has been the same. Yes, how do we navigate

Karen Swallow Prior: 6:09

that? Yeah, I love how you put that because, and I put it that way at points in my book, that calling is not just about what we do, but it's about who we are as a way of being. And so even though I have gone out of the formal classroom as a teacher, I mean, I do visiting posts now and then. I do different kinds of teaching, but I'm not a full time academic any longer, I still teach. I still believe that is my call. My writing is teaching, my speaking is teaching, my visiting posts are teaching so it has taken a different form than it did before. So that can happen for us in a variety of ways over the course of life.

Joshua Johnson: 6:50

Yeah. I mean, if I'm just looking at your sub stack and the things that you are writing, you are teaching, you're helping us navigate different different works of literature and different places so that we can engage well, you're, you're teaching, and you're, you're a good teacher, and you're somebody that you know people want to follow, because we're going to actually learn something from you. And so I love seeing your calling play out on different stages in your own life, which is fun to see think about work. So a lot of people, when we think of any any type of work today, we think, I need to follow my passion. I have to love what I do. Sometimes work is going to be work, and we're going to have to do it. Where did work come from? What is work and why is it good for us to have work?

Karen Swallow Prior: 7:38

Work is part of God's original plan for us as human beings, even before the fall, when God created Adam and then Eve in the garden, he called them to work, to be his co laborers, really, in stewarding creation and caring for creation, and they were doing that before, Before the Fall, Adam was tasked with naming the animals I cite in the book. One of my favorite descriptions of work before the fall is from John Milton's Paradise Lost, where he depicts Adam and Eve working in the garden, and the work that they have to do is defined by abundance, because the garden is so rich and full. But they have to lop and prune and and cut and trim and cultivate even before the fall. And of course, we all know, because we've all lived after the fall that we it's, it's our work now. It has many different kinds of obstacles. Yeah, it's still part of God's original plan for us. And so I think even though work is hard and it's not always something that we love, it is good, and it is, it is God's original call for us, because we are working with him to serve our neighbors and to serve our our families through our work, whatever that might be.

Joshua Johnson: 9:52

So when I think of toil, I think moving in after the fall and work, I'm thinking so many people have a scarcity mindset that I have to, I have to work really hard to get what is, is ours, so we could provide for our family. We could get and there are limited resources in this world. So, you know, this is why we have wars and nation states, is we just fight for limited resources, but in the kingdom and and creation. You know, Milton's talking about abundance. God had said there is an abundance. There is there a shift that we need to take in our work of knowing that in the kingdom of God there may be abundance and God is good. Our work is good, and God is for us. And I think abundance and scarcity. I think one is one of the biggest problems in this world. How do we reframe that and shift that perspective for

Karen Swallow Prior: 10:48

us? Yeah, I mean, of course, we have to understand that God's provision is infinite and eternal, and he never runs out of the good things for us. That's obviously not true of the world. Particular things in the world, and so I think it does depend on what we have our eyes on, and the reason why that showed up the way that it does in my book. I mean, I think it's an important idea, but it was personal for me, and I don't know that I put this in there or not, but when I was reaching the end of my vocation as a classroom professor and considering what I might do next, I talked with a good friend of mine about an opportunity I had that I wasn't sure if it was a good fit. And he just said, don't make a decision out of a scarcity mindset. Don't just do this because you think your opportunities will be scarce now. And that just stuck with me, because I didn't realize I was even doing that, and so that made me look at everything differently. Like, yes, there may you know, as I said a few minutes ago, the academic environment has changed greatly, and jobs are scarcer, and scarcer schools are closing. So that is not necessarily a good time in our culture right now. There for, you know, many academic appointments just like you know, the car industry changed half a century ago. Things do shift and change, but opportunities in general, and and the ability to use our gifts and our our talent and our time and our service and our work for our neighbors and for the glory of God will never end. So sometimes we just have to take our eyes off the thing that we've had our eyes on for a while and look up and see what else is out there. Because those opportunities are infinite.

Joshua Johnson: 12:36

So hard to look up, and it's really hard we look interiorly so often, and so it's so, so difficult. So if I'm looking at like, what you did, and you're teaching college students, you know, if my work with high school college students in the past, when I asked somebody, would you like to know God's call on your life? Would you like to know what you're supposed to do? Everybody's like, yes, what am I supposed to do? I want to know this. So practically, what does it look like? How do we start to discern some of this calling and our true vocation for us in relation to the caller?

Karen Swallow Prior: 13:13

Now, that is such a good question, and I will say at the outset that I don't have a formula or a six step plan in the book to follow, oh, man, yeah, I don't have God's phone numbers. You can call him up and say, Hey, God, what am I supposed to do? I wish it were that easy. But I think what you know, what I you know when I first kind of say, is the world and the field are wide open, right? I mean, there are things in God's moral law and in our circumstances that obviously shut some things off, some things we shouldn't do because they're wrong, and then other things that we can't do because, you know, God created me to be five foot three, so I'm not going to be a WNBA player, right? I mean, so there are limitations, but the limitations really went again when you're thinking about abundance and infinity and eternity are are just so very few. It's like that tree in the garden, the one, the two trees from which we could not eat, and yet all the rest were there. That's That's what vocation and calling look like. And so I do think we have to be good stewards of the circumstances and opportunities God places us in the abilities and opportunities that he gives us. Like some, some people have an opportunity to go to college and get a college degree and be good stewards, and they should do that if that's, you know, if that's where their skill set is. And yet, other people have other opportunities, and so we want to steward those well. And then we want to be in community. We want to be around people who can tell us things about ourselves that we might not see, the things that we're good at that we might not recognize, maybe even people honest enough to say, you know, you're not really that good at this, or I don't think you'd be happy doing this. I've had, I have had many people in my life, at certain times, say, You know what, I don't think you'd enjoy doing this. This would kill you. This would be the death of you and and that has been good, good wisdom for me. So those are all the things that God uses in our lives, our circumstances, our our talents, our opportunities, and the people around us who can speak into our lives to help us discern what our calling might be, and we don't have to live in fear that we're going to miss the one calling, because there are multiple callings, and God can use a circuitous paths to bring us around to, you know, something he may have have intended for us that we took a sideways route to get to, and that's okay. Also, what

Joshua Johnson: 15:44

happens? So I'm just, I'm thinking of some people in my life, so what happens if, if they have been in a place where they really, truly believe this is my calling, it's also my sweet spot, like it's the place that I feel. Like I was made for, and for some reason, we got called somewhere else, and we're doing something, but we still long and pine for the place that we feel like we were made for. But it's a it's a new, new life and a new world, and we're not satisfied yet, even though we know we were called and we know that it was the next thing. How do we be okay that calling shifts, even if you're giving up something that was good? Yeah,

Karen Swallow Prior: 16:34

I mean, I have been there and I'm probably still, sort of still in that transition of giving up something that I thought that I was made to do and doing something different. And there is some of us adjust to change more quickly than others. I do not adjust to change easily. I want everything to be the same every day, but that seldom happens. And so I think we give ourselves grace for the disappointment, the pain, the longing, you know, but we also, we also give God grace, right? We also say, you know, God, you do have something else for me. And every there is nothing in this world that is perfect. So we are going to give up some things. But nothing is is, you know, completely perfect. And so there will be some, some negative part of that thing we gave up that will, we should be glad that we got to say goodbye to and then the new things in front of us have positive things, even if we are still struggling with some of the the negative, negative aspects of change or loss and so and then that, for me, I just because, again, we haven't really talked about this, but my background is literature. I was an English professor. I don't even know you know, why am I writing about this? Well, for many reasons, but reading literature widely for for many years, has helped me to see my own place in the human story and how privileged it is and what a blessing it I mean, most people who have lived on this earth have not had the ability to make this choice or that choice, or pursue this career or that career that most people have just had to find, you know, provide for their families, find health and safety and shelter, and we're kind of spoiled as Americans. I'll take it. I'm thankful for it, but we still have to keep that perspective that this is a very limited time in human history where we have so many choices and so many options, and taking the broader perspective to understand the kinds of things that our brothers and sisters in Christ over the years have gone through, and just the rest of of humans who've lived in history, just it just, I think we need more perspective.

Joshua Johnson: 18:40

That reminds me, I don't know if you've read Claire Keegan small things like these. It's one of my favorites. It's one of my favorite books, and I love the movie from last year as well. An Irish coal miner working really hard providing for his family. Really doesn't feel like this is really a passionate job. Is just a hard, gritty job that he has to do to provide is and the whole town doesn't look pretty. There's a lot of ugliness there, but he pursues something that looks true and good and beautiful. And so even taking something like that, and his pursuit of that, even in the midst of ugliness and grittiness and difficulty and his work and his job, what does it look like for us? Then you're using this framing device of true good and beautiful so what is that true good and beautiful work look like even in the midst of a coal miner in Ireland and you know, the early 1900s

Karen Swallow Prior: 19:39

Oh yeah, no. I love that. You use that example, and I'll avoid all the spoilers, but you described it perfectly. It really is some about someone living a hard life that does not look glamorous and fun and yet finding pursuing the true, the good and beautiful in his life, and blessing others and his family through that. Okay, that's my spoiler. And so yes, that kind of perspective, because that's something else I cover in the book, is just how our attitudes about work, even in modern America, have changed dramatically in just three generations. It's been different for each generation. And so my argument is simply that wherever we are, whatever our circumstances, if we are pursuing the true, the good and beautiful, in our daily lives, in our work, in our relationships, in whatever jobs we might have, in whatever careers we might pursuing, whatever vocations we're trying to discern, if we pursue goodness, truth and beauty, then we are fulfilling our callings. And you know, I try to just make some practical application to that, because even that sounds a little ethereal, but at least it breaks it down into, you know, at least three, three slightly smaller parts.

Joshua Johnson: 20:50

So let's break down those, those parts, what is, what is truth, and why we're pursuing truth?

Karen Swallow Prior: 20:57

Yeah, such a small question. Right? Very small question. Well, you know, one of the points that I make in this chapter on truth is, you know, Christians today are really good about at talking about what we used to be really good at talking about truth. We cared a lot about truth, and I care a lot about truth, don't get me wrong, but I think we've been limited even in the way that we think about truth. It's always about doctrine or absolute truth, universal truth, and those things are good. But even in the material, physical world, there is truth we need to understand, in other words, like reality. So if we have a vision or dream or desire to do or be something, we need to know that the reality of what is entailed in that job, in that lifestyle, all the requirements of it, we need to have a true vision or true understanding of simply what it entails. And so that's why we try things, and that's why, you know, it's good to do that. But we live in so many things are distorted in this digital age. We see, you know, we have, you can sit down in front of a cable a television show and watch, you know, the most dangerous jobs, or the most whatever, whatever jobs, and everything looks like. It's it's fun and exciting, and you only see a tiny percentage of what it really looks like. And so we have to recognize the reality of the world. So that's one practical application that I talk about in terms of truth. The reverse of that is knowing the truth about ourselves, right? Knowing, are we really good at this thing? I mean, you know, we could think of someone who's a really bad singer and just, you know, gets up and always wants to sing in front of people, and that's maybe a little bit humorous and sad, but think about the people, because we've all had them in our lives, the people who were in positions of some kind of pastoring or teaching and should not have been in those positions, right? So it can be very dangerous to all of us and also keep a person from finding out what they really are good at and what their true calling is if they're just pursuing something that really is not their calling.

Joshua Johnson: 23:04

So then, what's the difference then, between my truth and the truth about myself?

Karen Swallow Prior: 23:09

Oh, because the truth about yourself is an objective truth. Of course, we can never find the entire truth about ourselves, our, you know, our in our hearts. But listen again, going back to listening to others, what others have to say about what you're good at that you might not recognize, or just a need that you can fill through your unique circumstances or abilities, and recognizing you know that you, I mean, you can be bad at something and still enjoy it and pursue it. I love, love to run. I am the probably the world's slowest runner at this stage in my life, and I still do it just for myself, but I'm not out there, you know, asking Nike if I can, you know, they'll sponsor me, because I know I'm not good at it, right? Yeah, I could try. I guess I could be like, I

Joshua Johnson: 23:54

might go. That's actually exactly what we want to do for our next campaign.

Karen Swallow Prior: 24:00

I want a Nike sponsorship, but again, that recognition of I'm just doing this for me, for, you know, my mental and physical health, and not because I have, you know, illusions of grandeur about this ability that I have. What does

Joshua Johnson: 24:15

it look like in a daily life within community to pursue something like truth?

Karen Swallow Prior: 24:21

Yeah. I mean, I think the pursuit of it is, I mean, there are lots of other ways we can think about truth, such as integrity is a kind of is truth. I think about bringing the whole of yourself to all that you do, like, even if you, even if you're working for I think I have this example in in my book, and I don't remember which chapter, but of a colleague I had when I was teaching English at a university full time, and her first calling was as a wife and mom, and then she later got her academic degrees to teach English, and the way she taught English was almost like a mom, like she became like a mom to the kid. She brought her whole self to this position. I was not like that, and that's okay. But you know, so she would, you know, she would often get the athletes, and who didn't care a whit about the five paragraph essay, but she would just like mother them right into the five paragraph essay, and because she brought her whole self, her integrity, to her position. And so, so there's, I think there's a holism that is part of truth. I mean, not that we, you know. I mean, there's some jobs, obviously, where being a truthful counselor means you have to keep a separation between yourself and your client. And so different jobs require different boundaries and and different opportunities to bring different parts of ourselves or our entire selves to them. And so again, that goes back to the truth of the of the work, the truth of the relationships, the truth of ourselves before God and fulfilling His will and His law. I mean, those sounds like, sound like grand things, but just simply, even in in the most mundane work that we might do. So we can do it truly and truthfully. We want the cashier who's checking us out in the grocery store to do her work truthfully and honorably, just as we want doctors and pastors to do this the work their same way.

Joshua Johnson: 26:14

So then what is the what is good and beautiful look like? How do we discern those things. Yeah,

Karen Swallow Prior: 26:20

so I define goodness as truth made manifest. So like, truth is sort of like the abstract idea, and goodness is what truth looks like, embodied. So embody, you know? So if we do, you know, if we are good people, we have character, we have virtue that's displayed. That's something that people can see. If we do good work, well, then that is the truth of that work being displayed. I quote Dorothy Sayers a lot in throughout the book, but especially in this chapter, because really, all you have to do is read Dorothy Sayers. Well, you could read my book as well, but Dorothy Sayers has so much that's good to say. I mean, she talks about, we like to put the word Christian as an adjective in front of many of the things that we do. And she she says, There's no such thing as Christian work. There's just good work that's well done, and that's what Christians should be demanding of of each other and of ourselves, that kind of goodness. And there's so many ways to to bring goodness to the world through different kinds of work that is done well. And I and goodness itself is just so good. And I, you know, I want to drop a little line for all the perfectionists out there who are paralyzed and end up not doing something, because nothing short of perfection, will do that is just a wrong mindset, because when God created the world, he described the things he created as good, and that at one point very good. And good is good enough for God. And so yes, we can pursue excellence, and I believe in that. But good is good as as well

Joshua Johnson: 28:02

creativity and creation being co creators. A lot of people are like, Hey, I would love to do this true, good and beautiful work, and thinking that it has to look a certain way. What does that look like, embodied in a culture, especially in our capitalistic pursuit of wealth, what does being people that pursue true, good and beautiful look like as a opposition to the wider culture? That

Karen Swallow Prior: 28:35

is a great question. And of course, my whole reason for talking about truth, goodness and beauty in our vocations is because God is the source of all that is true, good and beautiful, and it's that's his character and nature. And so if we are pursuing those things, we're actually pursuing God. So it's just another way of thinking about pursuing the will and the ways of God, and so that doesn't really look a lot like materialism or consumerism and you, but it does look beautiful. And that's the thing that I that I say about beauty, is that beauty, especially beauty, just attracts us. And there actually is a history of the word beauty that connects it to the word calling. So that's where I, you know, kind of land the book is, because beauty calls us. And so when we are pursuing the calling that God has for us in our on our lives, and there will be different ones, we're actually pursuing beauty, and we're displaying beauty in a way that attracts people to the source of beauty. And it's not to say that people you know, you know, people who have beautiful homes can be hospitable, and that's a way of of drawing people to the beauty of God. But people who, who don't have beautiful homes, and who just you know, are kind and have beautiful souls, and attract people. They are showing them something of God. And so they're again, going back to, you know, the fact that we exist in late modern America. There are many options and many choices that most people in history have not had, and we have. There are lots of ways to pursue truth, goodness and beauty and to draw people to God. But the point is, is that's what we should be doing, no matter what our calling is.

Joshua Johnson: 30:22

What happens when there's a community of people that are supposed to follow what is true, good and beautiful, and they decide to follow something different? What is our role as as people that do pursue those things and have the that good vocation, and we are people that are true, good and beautiful, and pursue truth and goodness and beauty. What happens when, when people go off the rails? What does it look like to call people to back to those things?

Karen Swallow Prior: 30:54

Right? Yeah. I mean, I think that's that's a role that we all have in one another's lives and community. Is to help one another to keep on that pursuit. But there certainly do come times, as you've suggested, when that accountability and that calling and that nudging doesn't work, and then we have to, we're faced with an example. I mean, to go back to truth, we have to face the reality that's in front of us. I think, you know, it's easy for us. I've done it myself to kind of deceive ourselves and say, No, this, you know, these people are really trying to do the right thing. They may not be doing it right. They may have made mistakes, but at some point, that's actually can be we're deceiving ourselves, and we have to say, no, there have, you know, they have been faced with the truth. They have been told how to correct and and have not. And so the reality is that for me to pursue truth, goodness and beauty, I cannot do this with with that community or this group of people. You know? I mean that that's just sometimes a decision that we have to make, but we certainly should always be seeking to hold one another and asking others to do the same for us accountable, holding us accountable for pursuing truth, goodness and beauty.

Joshua Johnson: 32:06

You know, one of the most impactful funerals that I've been to was a man. He died in his early 50s. I think he was a forklift driver for his entire career, but the the truth and goodness and beauty of his life lived out while doing the work of something that seems mundane really had a huge impact on 1000 people that were there and around and it was his life that actually gave us truth and goodness and beauty. Is there an example that you have seen of people that are embodying some of this that have inspired you to say they're actually following their true calling and vocation? And it may not look if we just look at the job, it may not look that way. But

Karen Swallow Prior: 33:00

I mean, I There are so many people in my life. I mean, I grew up among and surrounded by ordinary people who, you know, don't, don't make news and don't, aren't famous, and they aren't, you know, celebrities and in the evangelical world, you know, my mother is one of them who she lived 88 years, and almost every single one of those years, she was teaching children, even beginning when she was in elementary school and went to a one room schoolhouse, she helped teach the younger students. And she never went to school to be a teacher, but she taught Sunday school. She taught, you know, our younger family members made lessons for them. She just did that her whole life, and there are so many examples of the fruit of that ministry over the course of her life, and And yet, she didn't have a tick tock because she wasn't on Twitter, and, you know, she wasn't a celebrity Evangelical, but she was a faithful servant of the Lord, and the expression we have for like salt of the earth kind of people, you know, another example is, is my husband, who took on a second career as a high school teacher at our local public school. And so many Christians think of ministry as just working for the church and getting a paycheck from the church. And there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, I've done that, but there is ministry to be done just in our actual neighborhoods, in in the schools and in in, you know, businesses, just living as ordinary people doing good work, well, honorably, truthfully and beautifully.

Joshua Johnson: 34:35

So what do you think a community of people doing that work would look like? Yeah,

Karen Swallow Prior: 34:39

I think, you know, I, I think it would look probably small and humble and healthy and varied in the way that, you know, beauty is a variety of things. It's not just uniform. And, you know, I think that we, I think there was a hunger for this. I think that celebrity culture and mega institution culture has drawn the church away from these sort of simple, ordinary things, and people have been presented a distorted message that, you know, if you really love God, you're going to do big things, great things, and some people will do big and great things, but that but loving God and serving our neighbors, well, doesn't always look dramatic and exciting, and so I think communities that are rooted like church, communities that are rooted in the local community and are known and loved by the local community because of who they are and how they are and what they do, will just make the larger the larger community thrive and flourish in ways that don't draw attention to the church community, but just simply show themselves in the richer lives of everyone who lives there.

Joshua Johnson: 36:33

So I want to go back and talk a little bit about the distinction between passion, following your passion, and calling. What. What we've been talking about with the true, good and beautiful feels like this is who I am. It's an embodied thing that I'm doing, that I'm being, I'm being somebody that is pursuing truth and goodness and beauty. It sometimes doesn't look like maybe what I'm passionate about, which passion equals suffering. It means suffering, so pursuing your passion sometimes will just bring you straight to suffering, but it's okay. So what then? What does that look like? Then, if it is really more about being than about what you're passionate about doing,

Karen Swallow Prior: 37:23

being is a subjective thing, but if we're talking about truth, goodness and beauty, there are some objective qualities to those. So I think there's sort of an interplay between objective truth and goodness and beauty, and then how that subjectively plays out in the way that we live and are, and passion has an important role to play in that. But the points that that I really am trying to make in the book about passion is, I'm trying to counter the lie that the past couple of generations have been fed, which is that you know that you're going to get paid a lot of money to do what you're passionate about, like that. What sometimes that happens, and that's wonderful, but that should not be our expectation. And so what we have is a lot of I see it all around me as people refusing to take work that is not aligned with their passions. And therefore, you know, floundering in many, you know, ways, whereas we often have to do work that we're not passionate about, and then, but we still can still pursue our passions. You know, in other parts of our lives, work should not be our entire life. And then the other point that I make, the which is supported by the research of Cal Newport, who does a lot of research in this area, is he has found that people end up becoming passionate about the work that they do when they've done it long enough to become competent at it and good at it, and that they actually one, one study that he was several studies, but one study that I cite in the book that he talks about is the length of someone doing the job correlated directly with their passion about it. The longer they did the job, the more passionate they became at it. And it was not an exciting job. It was like being a college administrator assistant or something. And so passion has a part to play in all of that, but we live in a time when passion has become sort of the be all and end all of what we should do in our own measure of our success. And I and no one should feel that they are some kind of a failure, because the job that they do is something that they're not passionate about, or it wasn't, you know, they have a passion elsewhere. I have encountered that many times and and one of the examples I cite in the book is a is a young millennial who had a job that she was passionate about, and she just decided to leave it because she just she wanted her work to be her work, and she wanted to pursue her passion on the side, and that's also another way of living a fulfilling life of service to ourselves and our neighbors.

Joshua Johnson: 39:59

Do you think evangelicals are more prone to confusing passion with with calling, I do other Christians.

Karen Swallow Prior: 40:08

I think that's become a kind of a tick in contemporary evangelicalism. You know, probably there are people who could do a good job researching where that came from and why that is, and there are probably multiple reasons. But we've definitely become a culture that measures our relationship with God by the supposedly great things we do and the passion we have. You know, be passionate for this and for that. And the other point that I make in my book is, you know, some people are just even keeled people who aren't like burning with passion all the time, and that's actually okay, like we need more even keeled people in the world.

Joshua Johnson: 40:48

If I'm looking at the back of the book and all and you're citing all the works that you've cited, there's a lot of literature in here. Can you which is fantastic, and I love that. So can you give me some? Got an English prof, exactly. It's amazing. So can you give me some examples from literature about how this works?

Karen Swallow Prior: 41:09

Yeah, so one of the poems that I include is by one of my favorite poets, and one of my favorite poems the 17th Century Puritan or the 17th Century Anglican cleric, George Herbert. The poem that I include is called the collar, and it refers to the clerical collar. He was a priest. And the whole poem is him as a young priest speaking to God, raging and raving before God because he wants to get out of ministry, because he doesn't see any fruit for his labor, and he's angry at God. Because, you know, because he's serving the Lord, not seeing fruit, and the Lord could bring the fruit. And the whole poem is him just yelling at God. And the poem ends with, with God answering to him, my child. And the spoke, poet says, My Lord. And it's just, it's just a beautiful poem. He's it's a it's submission to the Lord, but it's also a picture of how the Lord welcomes our our railing and our questions and our anxiety and our frustration and still loves us as His children. And that is our ultimate calling is to be His child.

Joshua Johnson: 42:23

And that's beautiful, and that's man, thank you. Like, I want to be a child of God, and I want to get to that place like I'm okay there, whatever I do and wherever I go and Whatever befalls me in my life, that I'm a child of God. And I could say, Yes, Lord, what is your hope for this book? You have a calling. What do you hope that people would get from this and what it would give to the world?

Karen Swallow Prior: 42:48

Well, I hope, again, I said that I don't have, like, six steps or a magical formula for finding your calling. So what I hope it does is that it just opens up the field, opens up the range of possibilities, because some people are going to pursue their passion and get do good work and get paid a lot to do it, and other people are not, and some people are going to love their jobs, and other people are not, and some people are going to do one thing their whole, you know, one main vocation, their whole lives. And others are going to do a lot of things. But I want people to see just the beauty and variety and the truth and goodness and the way that God can use it all and will use it all, and that we don't need to narrow our our options, but we still need to have realistic expectations. I think that's a great poison in our culture, is that our our disappointments and anxieties come from unrealistic expectations. And so we can dream big and trust God to do to he's the one who's going to bring the fruit. But we can also just luxuriate in the everyday world, in ordinary work, in life with our among our neighbors and our family members. That is where most of the truth, goodness and beauty in the world is to be found, and that is what will draw us closer to God and draw others to him as well.

Joshua Johnson: 44:12

That's beautiful. Thank you, Karen, can you give us some recommendations? Anything you've been reading lately you could recommend?

Karen Swallow Prior: 44:19

Oh, my goodness. I um, well, I have a lot of citations in the book. A lot of you know, again, a lot of literature. I like to read literature. So I'll give the literature recommendations. You already mentioned these small things. What is it called? These small things like these. I can never remember the title, excellent book on my sub stack, which you've already mentioned. I am doing taking readers through a survey of British literature. We begin with Old English, go through Middle English, and now we're in the 17th century. We're just ending the 17th century. So I think lit, all of the classic literature is wonderful to read. I'm also posting on there some books that I cannot recommend, which is a little fun thing to books that you know, that I that I might not know you, so you might not like it, but I liked it. And so lots of lots of literature. And I hope you'll read this book and follow all the footnotes, because I cite a lot of different kinds of sources, work on works on vocation. There are a lot out there. I had to read most of them to write this book, but hopefully mine will just give you a little taste of the best of all of them. And it's short and sweet, so then you can go on and read great literature after this.

Joshua Johnson: 45:26

Well, this book is short, it is sweet and it is beautiful, and I love the way that you you wrote this. It just brings me into the world. And I just feel like I am enveloped into this book. It just feels cozy and good. It just makes me want to be a person that pursues truth and goodness and beauty. So be a better person in this world and that, you know, high and lofty passion and calling may not be the pursuit that I want, but the pursuit of truth and goodness and beauty with wherever I go. So well done. This is a fantastic, fantastic book. Highly recommend it to everyone. If you have have people that are pursuing calling, what does it look like to live in this world and where what they need? Give it out and buy a bunch of copies for friends. This is a fabulous graduation gift for people as well. There's all sorts of things. So this book should, for many years, be handed out to many people. So

Karen Swallow Prior: 46:28

and I will there are both generous bulk discounts are available. So just contact the publisher so you can get a lot of copies. Cheap, excellent.

Joshua Johnson: 46:36

Where would you like to point people to you so people could get it? How can people connect with you? Sub

Karen Swallow Prior: 46:40

stack is the best place. Case I my newsletter is titled The Priory. You can find me on, you know, on the site, or sign up for my emails. And I'm also, you know, I'm also, sadly, on x, which is not very true, good and beautiful, but I am there and and Instagram. Instagram is a little bit more beautiful, so I like to share pictures of my flowers and my dogs and my runs so

Joshua Johnson: 47:05

nice. And your library and my library,

Karen Swallow Prior: 47:08

yes, yes, yes, follow the journey of my library, which is, it's been so hot I haven't been doing any work on it, but it will continue as summer abates. Exactly.

Joshua Johnson: 47:19

Well, Karen, thank you for this conversation. Thank you for bringing us into the pursuit of truth and goodness and beauty. What is our true calling? That we have a calling, we have vocation, that we could actually work with God, that it is in relation to the caller, to the person being called. We are being called from outside of ourselves. And it's not just about what we desire to the things that are within us. So we don't just find it within us. We find it from outside of us is beautiful. Thank you, Karen, thank you, Joshua. You.