Heeding the Call

By Peter Clothier

(A shortened version of this essay was posted originally on Persist: The Blog.)

Remember, as a child, hearing your mother’s or your father’s voice, calling your name? If I close my eyes, I can still hear that call. I’m out in the backyard, perhaps, in the orchard behind the Rectory; or out in front, on the swing that hangs from the great old pine tree; or upstairs, in my room. I’d like to bet, if you close your eyes, that you can hear a similar call, in a place that has a particular resonance for you. Close your eyes. Hear your name. Re-imagine the precise detail of the place, the time of day, the circumstance. Someone, somewhere, is calling you…

And of course you were “called” by a name on the occasion of your birth. I happen to believe that we do not acquire our name by accident. It somehow “fits.” In my own case, the fit was obvious. I was born on the first day of August. In the calendar of saints of the Church of England — the Anglo-Catholic church, in which my father was a minister — that’s the Feast of St. Peter’s Chains, commemorating the apostle’s miraculous release from prison by the “angel of the Lord.” So inevitably I was Peter. I have a particular attachment to the name, having worked for many years to release myself from the chains of circumstance and habit when I feel them tying me down. My work — my writing — has become a continuing, almost daily dedication to the task of ridding myself of the extraneous, in search of the core self, the real “me.”

But that’s another story, or maybe a related one, to what I come to do today. I want to talk about “calling” in that other sense, the calling that is the name for what I am given to do with my life, what I was put here on this earth to do. Call it a mission. Each of us, I firmly believe, has that mission, that sense of purpose. When we discover it, when we’re able to pursue it consciously, we are most likely to be at ease with ourselves and those around us. We are authentic. We are “in integrity,” in the sense that we are on target, whole. Everything we do and everything we say feels right. We are comfortable with it. As some say, we are in flow.

While we are still looking for it — this sense of purpose — or ignoring it, or unaware of it, we flounder. We are scattered. We feel ill at ease with ourselves and others. Remember that feeling when your name was called? You felt, perhaps, recognized, your very being was somehow affirmed. If you follow your calling, this is how you feel. At one with yourself.

I know that I was called to be a writer at the age of twelve. I don’t actually remember the moment of knowing — it was not a lightning bolt — but my mother reminded me often, later, that I did know then. Where did that calling come from? I don’t know. I don’t believe in a higher power, some God who has my life planned out for me. No, the voice is an inner voice, prompted, perhaps, in part by some inherited DNA, in part by the complex of life’s experiences and events.

I do know that, in my own case, my love of words started early in life. I offered a workshop, years ago, at the Esalen Institute, in which I invited participants on a journey back into their first experience with language, from the feel of those very first words — mama, dada — to nursery rhymes and fairy tales. I don’t know about you, but I still remember many of those rhymes and stories, word for word, even some seventy years after I first heard them. They bring me as much pleasure when I recall them as they did then: Mary had a little lamb, whose fleece was white as snow…

Then I started learning languages: French, when I was five, Latin when I was six… And at school, being good at languages — along with being a mathematical dunce and a total duffer at sports — must have contributed to that calling. Language was a gift, a talent, that held out the promise of reward. No wonder that it called me. Throughout my teenage years I was a poet. At university, I studied Modern and Medieval Languages and French Philology!

So there was the call. And on leaving university, I chose to ignore it. It was clear to me that being a poet did not bring with it a reasonable expectation of making a living. So I chose to listen to another call — the call of social responsibility and acceptance — and set aside my other “calling.” I went into teaching. I climbed the educational ladder from high school teaching to university teaching, and climbed the academic ladder still further until I was a Dean. By the time I reached my fifties, I was nearing the top of that profession. I was offered wonderful jobs, vice-presidencies, presidencies of small colleges… And I quit.

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