I was at home when I got the call, which wasn't unexpected. For the last decade or so of his life my grandfather had battled various ailments, though what ultimately felled him was a broken hip and a heart that could no longer continue to work as it once had. He had been hospitalized for about a week and the doctors had given him little chance of a full recovery. When the phone rang that morning, I knew even before I picked it up what the message from my parents would be. I was prepared. And I was prepared as well when my grandmother asked me to say a few words at the private, family service a few days later. This is what I posted on Facebook at the time, and the sum of what I managed to say at the funeral (being prepared doesn't always make for an non-emotional delivery):
"A bit before 6 this morning, I received word that my grandfather's struggle was over. If I were going to sum him up for people who did not know or had never met him, it would be that he was always there. He may not have said very much, he was not an overly emotional or expressive man, but he was always there for his family. When he and my grandmother celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 2003, he nixed a large celebration because, as he told me, "we have always been a family" and that is who he wanted gathered together. His physical presence is going to be missed as we gather together this holiday season. RIP, John R. Lantzer."
I have thought about him, and those words, quite a bit over the past few days as this anniversary approached. But it isn't a rumination of mortality (or even the immortal soul) that this post is about, rather it is about vocation. Perhaps both make sense this time of year, not only have we just passed on the calendar Halloween (October 31st), All Saints (November 1st) and All Souls (November 2nd) days (the latter two on the Christian calendar), but also because October 31st marks Reformation Day (at least for Protestants who remember such things).
Martin Luther, the German monk (and, as I like to point out to students, college professor) who sparked both a split and reform movement (or at least came to personify both) within the Western Church by his posting of his 95 Thesis, wrote a good deal about vocation. For those of you who only think of it in terms of another word for "job", here is the Bing dictionary's definition: "(1) somebody's job: somebody's work, job, or profession, especially a type of work demanding special commitment (2) urge to follow specific career: a strong feeling of being destined or called to undertake a specific type of work, especially a sense of being chosen by God for religious work or a religious life." It is not just what you do for money, or for a living, but also what you do with your time and talent, at the time and place you find yourself living in.
My vocation, and I have little difficulty thinking in such terms (perhaps a reflection of a portion of my family tree having Germanic Lutheran roots) is that of a professional Historian. That vocation could not be more different than that of my grandfather, who worked as an electrician (owning his own company) and in construction, not to mention having grown up on farm, during his lifetime. And yet the words that my grandfather said to me over the phone time and time again, whenever we talked while I was in college (and separated from my family by nearly 4 hours) still echo in my head, and reflect those principles about work (what once might even have been called a Protestant work ethic): "Just keep your nose to the grindstone."
Beyond the importance to family then, perhaps my grandfather's greatest legacy to those he left behind was that work ethic. To work hard at whatever it is you are doing. To finish the work that you start, no matter what it is you are working at. These might seem like platitudes, or even simplistic, but they are harder to achieve than many of us like to think. And hard work, in the service of God, for the benefit of others, in whatever it is we are called to do, is a worthy endeavor to pursue. To paraphrase and borrow from St. Paul in 2 Timothy 4:7, it is a goal to strive for, a race worth running, a task worth doing. And, I might add, doing well.
I hope that the pages of The Mainline, my second book (which I was pleased to be able to send a copy of to my grandparents a few months before my grandfather died), reflected some of that vocational passion as well.
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