At what age do you recognize and accept a calling in life?
By Michael Henderson
At what age do you recognize and accept a calling in life? I have met a man whose experience suggests that you are never too old. He wouldn’t describe himself as a Christian, at least not yet. But he is already, he confesses, a ‘lapsed agnostic’. Bill Porter is now 85 and for 15 years he has followed a star, the reform of the world’s media. ‘I have this inner compulsion,’ he says cheerfully. ‘It’s a wonderful thing to be given a sense of purpose that lasts you all your days.’
Porter is the founder and spark plug for the International Communications Forum (ICF), a loose network of professionals in all branches of the media who want to accept as much responsibility for the effect of their work on society as they do for its quality. His expressed aim is to build up a world-wide core of media men and women who believe in ethical values and apply them in their lives.
Porter describes the Forum as a conscience to conscience activity rather than an organization. To him the conscience is ‘a remarkable piece of high technology that is inside us, albeit often covered over with the compromises of a life time, but which enables us to choose right from wrong, truth from falsehood.’
Fifteen years ago, Porter concedes, his conscience had been covered over. After wartime service in the army he had risen to be chief executive of a large international academic and business publishing house but had never given thought to his responsibility for the wrongs in the world. He was happy to leave that to the politicians or even the clergy.
‘I was prepared to vote through dishonest accounts, to sanction deceitful promotions and to support products and policies that I knew to be wrong and not in the best interests of our employees and audiences. But I would complain about danger in our streets, theft from our homes, being pestered by drug addicts and beggars, and about the indiscipline of my children and others.’
When he was seventy and successful and ready for a comfortable retirement with his Jugoslav war hero wife, Sonja – they had been married nearly thirty years - he read that the mass media had become the largest industry in the world and asked himself whether it was the most responsible. This caused him to rethink his own motivations which had been limited to making money and becoming important. Porter talked over this new found conviction about the state of the media with Sonja. Her response, ‘If you are thinking that way, why don’t you do something about it.’* Within a few weeks Sonja had died of hepatitis but her challenge lived with him.
He told a few friends of his ‘inner compulsion’ to bring a new thinking to the media. To his surprise they were not dismissive but rather encouraged him. And so began the ICF which has now held conferences on four continents and has involved more than 2,500 media people in 116 countries.
Its Sarajevo Principles, formulated at a conference in Bosnia in 2000, have been described as ‘a document of historic importance’ by Jay Rosen, the ‘father of community journalism’. Signatories agree to undertake to demonstrate in their own lives the values that they hope for, and often demand, in others. They are committed to confronting hypocrisy, oppression, exploitation and evil, firstly by their own clarity and straightness and then through the means by which they reach their audiences.
A profile in Australian’s leading daily ‘The Age’, concludes, ‘Porter is a modest man of remarkable candor and genial humor. His life is something of a puzzle to him. He wasn’t born into a religious family and for most of his working life the principles that he is now advocating lay dormant within him. He is not sure whether he is a spiritual person, but he does know his strong, purposeful wife is part of what he is now doing.’
Porter has sometimes been asked how he would have lived his life if the ICF had not happened. He usually responds, ‘Playing golf and bridge, going on cruises and choosing comely widows.’ Why him? ‘I do not know the answer to that question, but I do know that when I decided to take this road I experienced a sense of inner compulsion that has never left me. Where does it come from, if not from some superior guiding force in the universe?’
He regards the last fifteen years as the most satisfying and effective time of his life. Each morning he seeks to discover what he can do ‘progress the forces of good’. ‘Everyone can have that experience,’ he told me, ‘and as more of us do then we shall build a world where poverty is history, justice is universal and peace is permanent.’
*Bill Porter’s autobiography is called Do Something About It – a Media Man’s Story
International Communications Website: www.icforum.org
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Michael Henderson is a friend of mine who has written books like: "Forgiveness, Breaking the chanin of hate", "Forgiveness", etc. He has been writing great articles for my site spiritrestoration.org for the past three years.
Feel free to share with us about your calling . . . .
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Epiphany and Enlightentment,
In a Bible class, years ago, I taught on the subject, Training Up Children In The Way That They Should Go, taken from Prov. 22:6, of course. I explained that proper training should take into consideration two important issues, i.e., training your children to grow up to be sound, wholesome, spiritual and moral human beings. Second, I pointed out that each child, like Paul, Jeremiah, Samuel and others, has his or her own unique qualities, characteristics, temperaments, understandings and callings.
Paul, Jeremiah and Samuel (all working for one God and one purpose), were all unique in their own right. Consider some of the key prophets in the Bible, Daniel in the Palace, Jeremiah behind with the remnant and of course Ezekiel who lived with the exiles in the ghettos at Chebar. Each one fulfilled his individual course, and was in his respective place at the right time.
The parenting role, unique in itself, is a special calling. Each parent's objective should be is to raise up each child, respecting their uniqueness, to fulfill their divinely appointed purpose(s) in life. I explained that we do a disservice to our children when we demean their uniqueness, and demand conformity while ignoring those individual differences (that God has birthed into each of them before they were formed in the belly), just to make our lives easier.
Piaget and Erickson, famous child psychologists remind us that the personality of our children are usually formed as early as two or three years of age. A parent who fails to get busy during infancy will in most instances, prevent hinder or hinder a child's full development.
I believe that each of us experiences at least two callings in our lives. The first calling is to notify us of that special discourse or direction that God has chosen for our lives, secular and spiritual. The second calling will come to let us know when it is time to move out on that calling. Either calling could occur at any time along the time- line of our lives. But we must be ready when the baton is passed along to us and we are told to move out, for God knows the exact time of our divine appointment.
Are we required to respond in a positive manner, in other words is it a yes or no proposition? I kind of agree with the quantum physics writers in that regard, who seem to teach that we have choices in life, choices which can lead to much regret. For even the Bible teaches us that there is a way that seems right to a man but the ends thereof are the ways of death. The Bible also tells us about a straight gate and a narrow way...versus a broad gate and a wide way that we can choose, which can turn out to be disastrous. In each instance it seems to be up to the individual to decide whether or not he will accede or reject his or her individual calling(s), whether they be religious callings or not.
I believe that we are mostly all called to be an ingredient in God's recipe for mankind and the earth....His Logos!
My calling came very young, i.e., during my pre-pubescent period. Since God qualifies the one that he calls, I had to wait until years later, 21 years of age exactly, before moving out as Abraham finally did with his calling. I knew that my primary calling was to be a spiritual one, albeit I knew that I had some special secular/political work to do; when I was chosen to speak to members of Congress in 1983, on Capitol Hill, in Washington DC regarding the plight of the urban poor in the USA, I remembered that youthful secular calling. For I was wondering, how did I get there? I find myself back in Washington DC again fighting for this and other causes even as I write.
In high school I shared with my significant others, how I knew that I wouldn't be like this or that when I was fully grown, e.g. as a fireman' and there is nothing wrong with being a fireman. I knew, simply, that God was preparing me, using human agents, to move primarily in a non-secular direction, while I felt that I was being shaped to help do the same with the policy-makers in our country.
But no matter the calling, secular or religious, God is looking for that person that is so well described in Jeremiah 5, , i.e., seek...if ye can find a man, if there be any that executeth judgment, that seeketh the truth...", that is rare. For we see dishonesty in the government, in the ministry, in the workplace and even in our homes. I applaud this octogenarian, who stepped out in the latter years of his life, for it is never too late or too early, for one to stand in his calling, and to add to the world that portion that God gave him to share with the rest of us.
I applaud him.
Rev. C. Solomon
Posted by seal of Abraham | Tuesday, March 14, 2006 6:49:00 AM