The following Vocare spiritual practice is featured in Church Anew’s Lent in a Box for 2023 and was developed by Rev. Dr. Charlene Rachuy Cox as part of the Nourishing Vocation Project of The Lutheran Center at St. Olaf College. We will be offering one piece of the Vocare practice each week. 

Vocare is an ongoing spiritual practice designed to help you discern and embrace your various callings so that you can more intentionally live life on purpose for the common good. 

Through guided reflection on personal life experiences via the lenses of values, openness, call, attentiveness, regrets, and experiences of God’s presence, the Vocare practice nourishes discernment of three primary questions. Who am I called to be? What am I called to do? Why am I here?

Vocare Practice: Called TO ATTENTIVENESS

You are invited to focus on where you regularly invest your attention by considering what captures your time, energy, thoughts, and imagination in everyday life. By so considering, you are invited to nourish in a particular way, God’s present-tense call in and through daily living. Use the time between the following guided questions for your own reflection and meditation. Bring to mind a specific day, or season in your own life. Is this day or season fairly typical for you, or is it an anomaly in the rhythm of your life? How has your attention in this specific day or season shaped your life and its horizons?

Reflect upon your attentiveness

• How do I typically decide where I invest my attention?

• What captured and held my attention today?

• Where do I wish I could have invested my attention today?

• Did my attention align with my values?

• What do I need for tomorrow?

Prayer

Turn my attention to you, O God, that I might recognize you at work in my life. In the name of Jesus, Amen.

Check out our Instagram reel for a video version of this reflection.