The vocation of the restaurateur

Last updated on: April 1, 2008 at 8:10 am By Gene Veith

I caught the chef Gordon Ramsey on my new favorite show, BBC’s comedy car show “Top Gear,” and since he could drive really fast, I decided to watch his show Hell’s Kitchen.

This is a sort of American Idol of cookery, only the sole judge is Ramsey, the Simon Cowell of chefs. The different cooks compete in doing the various tasks required in a professional kitchen and the winner gets to run one of Ramsey’s restaurants.

Watching the show reminds us of the hard work and high pressure that professional restaurant workers have to deal with. Ramsey is like a drill sergeant, demanding excellent work, quality preparations, and outstanding service for the customers. He yells at the contestants and cusses them out (carefully bleeped) when they fall short, but he also teaches and mentors.

The show can demonstrate to young people the demands of the no-coddling real world of demanding bosses and high performance standards. We often see the customers enjoying their peaceful dinner, unaware of the turmoil that it took to prepare it. The show makes us appreciate the vocation of the professionals who prepare us our daily bread.

(I just caught the reruns. The new season premiers tonight after “American Idol.”)

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Anne Rice on Jesus, Faith, & Vocation

Last updated on: March 25, 2008 at 7:57 am By Gene Veith

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Anne Rice, who became famous for writing highly literate vampire novels, gives more details about her conversion to Christianity in a forum on the Washington Post online: On Faith: Guest Voices: My Trust in My Lord. Sample:

Look: I believe in Him. It’s that simple and that complex. I believe in Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the God Man who came to earth, born as a tiny baby and then lived over thirty years in our midst. I believe in what we celebrate this week: the scandal of the cross and the miracle of the Resurrection. My belief is total. And I know that I cannot convince anyone of it by reason, anymore than an atheist can convince me, by reason, that there is no God.

A long life of historical study and biblical research led me to my belief, and when faith returned to me, the return was total. It transformed my existence completely; it changed the direction of the journey I was traveling through the world. Within a few years of my return to Christ, I dedicated my work to Him, vowing to write for Him and Him alone. My study of Scripture deepened; my study of New Testament scholarship became a daily commitment. My prayers and my meditation were centered on Christ.

And my writing for Him became a vocation that eclipsed my profession as a writer that had existed before.
Why did faith come back to me? I don’t claim to know the answer. But what I want to talk about right now is trust. Faith for me was intimately involved with love for God and trust in Him, and that trust in Him was as transformative as the love. . . .

Before my consecration to Christ, I became familiar with a whole range of arguments against the Savior to whom I committed my life. In the end I didn’t find the skeptics particularly convincing, while at the same time the power of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John swept me off my feet. And above all, when I began to talk to Jesus Christ again it was with trust.

On the afternoon in 1998 when faith returned, I experienced a sense of the limitless power and majesty of God that left me convinced that He knew all the answers to the theological and sociological questions that had tormented me for years. I saw, in one enduring moment, that the God who could make the Double Helix and the snow flake, the God who could make the Black holes in space, and the lilies of the field, could do absolutely anything and must know everything — even why good people suffer, why genocide and war plague our planet, and why Christians have lost, in America and in other lands, so much credibility as people who know how to love. I felt a trust in this all-knowing God; I felt a sudden release of all my doubts. Indeed, my questions became petty in the face of the greatness I beheld. I felt a deep and irreversible assurance that God knew and understood every single moment of every life that had ever been lived, or would be lived on Earth. I saw the universe as an immense and intricate tapestry, and I perceived that the Maker of the tapestry saw interwoven in that tapestry all our experiences in a way that we could not hope, on this Earth, to understand.

This was not a joyful moment for me. It wasn’t an easy moment. It was an admission that I loved and believed in God, and that my old atheism was a façade. I knew it was going to be difficult to return to the Maker, to give over my life to Him, and become a member of a huge quarreling religion that had broken into many denominations and factions and cults worldwide. But I knew that the Lord was going to help me with this return to Him. I trusted that He would help me. And that trust is what under girds my faith to this day.

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Christmas and Vocation

Last updated on: December 24, 2007 at 11:23 am By Gene Veith

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HT to Paul McCain for quotes about how Luther relates vocation to Christmas:

Here is another excellent and helpful lesson, namely, that after the shepherds have been enlightened and have come to a true knowledge of Christ, they do not run out into the desert-which is what the crazy monks and nuns in the cloisters did! No the shepherds continue in their vocation, and in the process they also serve their fellow men. For true faith does not create people who abandon their secular vocation and begin a totally different kind of living, a way of life which the totally irrational monks considered essential to being saved, even though it was only an externally different way of existence. [Klug, Luther’s House Postils, Vol. 1:48]

“We conclude, therefore, that a Christian lives not in Himself, but in Christ and in the neighbor. Otherwise he is not a Christian. He lives in Christ through faith, in his neighbor through love. By faith he is caught up beyond himself into God. By love he descends beneath himself into his neighbor.” “On the Freedom of a Christian,” (LW 31:371)

“These are the two things in which a Christian is to exercise himself, the one that he draws Christ into himself, and that by faith he makes him his own, appropriates to himself the treasures of Christ and confidently builds upon them; the other that he condescends to his neighbor and lets him share in that which he has received, even as he shares in the treasures of Christ.” 1521 Christmas sermon.

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The Vocation of a Coach

Last updated on: November 26, 2007 at 9:39 am By Gene Veith

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Kansas lost to Missouri on Saturday, marring their undefeated season and shot at the national title. But still, that the Kansas Jayhawks came out of nowhere–being completely unranked at the beginning of the season–to having had a legitimate shot at the national championship is a testimony to coach Mark Mangino.

The massively obese coach is a football genius, just as the massively obese Nero Wolfe is a detection genius. Mangino has specialized in raising teams from the dead. He helped turn even Kansas State into a good football team while he was on the coaching staff. Then he served as the Offensive Coordinator for the Oklahoma Sooners. Back in the 1990s, the Sooners, gutted by NCAA program and recruitment penalties, were mired in mediocrity. They went through several hapless coaches before bringing on today’s Bob Stoops. He, in turn, brought in Mangino, and in 2000, the Sooners–pretty much unheralded until they crushed a powerful Texas team–won the national championship.

Now Mangino is the head coach at the University of Kansas, and he again worked his magic. (Nebraska should be taking up collections from school children to lure him there.) You have to remember that teams like Kansas do not have the benefit of all of those blue-ribbon recruits that the powerhouses do.

“He is doing what Bill Snyder did,” said [Mark] Stallard, who wrote “Tales From the Jayhawks Gridiron.” “Take three-star players and coach them into four- or five-star players that Texas A&M or Texas overlooked.”

COACH them into five-star players! Taking someone of modest ability and TEACHING him to be great! That is the sign of a first-rate coach, a vocation that, we sometimes forget, is a subset of the TEACHER.

Mark Mangino

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The Vocation of Hollywood Writers

Last updated on: November 6, 2007 at 9:52 am By Gene Veith

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I am taking no position on the writers’ strike that is sending late-night comedy shows into re-runs and halting some Hollywood productions. I will just draw your attention to a group that usually receives no attention, though they are the creative source of what makes money for the famous people.

Jay Leno is not funny of himself. He does not make up his jokes. He delivers them well, which is to his credit, but his jokes are made-up by writers.

As has been said elsewhere, many people seem to assume that actors make up their dialogue as they go and are responsible for the movies they star in. No, actors recite lines from a script that someone had to write.

People go to movies because their favorite movie star is in it. More sophisticated folks go to movies because of their favorite director. But almost no one goes to a movie because it was written by their favorite screenwriter. In fact, the screenwriter’s name can hardly be found, unless you are patient enough to sit through the credits at the end, where a sharp eye can note the screenwriters, along with the key grip, the gaffer, and the caterer.

Yes, movie and television scripts are usually the product of many writers working together and rewriting each other’s contributions. And the director does have the final say, often re-working the lines and the story as the movie is being made. This, of course, adds to the indignity of the writers’ position, since their original intention is seldom honored or even respected. Still, whenever you come across funny lines, plot twists, clever dialogue, and profound themes, thank the writer.

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Vocational Video

Last updated on: October 30, 2007 at 6:59 am By Gene Veith

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Look what I can do with my new blog! I offer here this video on the doctrine of vocation for your edification and theological analysis.

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