Today we have a guest post written by Reverend Paul Bailey discussing wine, vocation, and authenticity. Read on for some excellent insight into all of the above!
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A Champagne does not, so far as I know, spend its life pining to become Madeira; even though both are superb wines. And the people who make these wines clearly don’t get them mixed up. What they do is work with the wines in such a way that they become most fully what they are intended to be, not what something else is supposed to be.
A person making Madeira wants to make the best Madeira possible, I hope. Winemakers want their fine wines to most winsomely express their terroir, their heritage, their nature as a particular grape. And, if they are just making a wine to glug without thinking about it, to make the truest one of those. What a winemaker wants to do, I hope, is encourage the raw product, the grape, to assume its authentic vocation, to become what the grape really wants to be in fullness, as it becomes wine.
The whole process teaches respect, for the grape, and for the people working with it, and for the earth that makes it all possible. Authentic vocation is simply doing what you’re supposed to be doing, being who you are supposed to be, hearing one’s deepest interior calling and responding.
Van Gogh’s Starry Night – Google Art Project/Public Domain
There are a number of factors to an authentic vocation, but two seem to me prominent. First, that what you are doing, who you are, is consistent with your personality, your talents, your skills, your hopes and dreams.
I remember once standing awestruck in front of Van Gogh’s celebrated painting Starry Night and it became so clear that whatever else may have been going on with the artist, he was responding to the talents he had, the skills, the vision, the insistent longing to be a painter. Troubled as Van Gogh was, he was nevertheless in that sense in harmony with himself, because he wasn’t working against himself, doing something that was at odds with what he longed for or could do. He wasn’t trying to do or to be something that wasn’t him.
Working in the wine world is a fairly esoteric occupation, and I imagine as a result that most people are involved in it because they want to be and are good at what they do. But, who knows? So just to ask: in terms of occupation and just your personality, do you sense that you are living the life you are supposed to live? Is your work consistent with your personality? Is your work fun? Does it satisfy you, meet your deepest longings? Does it perhaps leave you feeling tired and frustrated? What could that be trying to tell you?
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And the second piece of authentic vocation (whether occupational and personal) for me is that it contains an element of aspiration, that there is something about it that draws you to reach for the stars, to strive, so that whatever it is you are doing, you are not settling, but are always reaching to be better. Absolute perfection may not exist of course, but that should in no wise discourage us from being on the pilgrimage toward it, because the striving, the careful attention, the learning, the longing, is how great wine is made, and how great people are made.
Winemakers seem to be people that aim high, experiment, adjust, dream. Does your work have you reaching upward? Conversely, have you fallen into settled habits and don’t desire anything better? People with authentic vocations seem to be always thirsting, expanding their reach, seeking something greater. Are you wanting to be better; what, in your work or in your life, are you striving for?
What about you? Is your vocation authentic?
Guest post written by Reverend Paul Bailey