How Will You Spend Your Extra Hour?

Yesterday I bought my first copy of O Magazine.  For those of you uncultured souls, the “O” stands for Oprah.  A number of people in the Lumunos network had tipped me off to the November issue.  I am guessing not so much for the cranberry recipes or the “savvy tips on cultivating your own signature style.”  They thought I would be interested in the primary theme, printed in big letters on the cover:  What’s Your True Calling?”  They were right.  

Later that day I somewhat nervously pulled out my O Magazine on the bus ride home. I would like to say that I am secure enough in who I am that I didn’t care if anyone caught me, but that wouldn’t be entirely true.  (Plus, I discovered that even if you do a good job of hiding the cover, all those perfume ads give off overwhelming scents.  I may have been hypersensitive, but it seemed like people three rows away were lifting their heads and smelling the air and looking around.)

The articles on call were pretty good.  As always, some better than others.  There were a number of sidebar stories of women who had made courageous, life giving decisions to change their career.  There was a lot to like in the issue, not the least of which was focusing on calling itself.  We have come a long way from the days when the word call was used only for men and women considering work in the institutional church.  

But here is where I found the biggest difference in Oprah’s interpretation of calling and that of Lumunos.  Call is about work, but it is also about the rest of life. This is one of the reason’s we changed our name from Faith at Work to Lumunos.  We listen for call as it applies to our vocation, but also our relationships, volunteer time, and self care.  Listening for call is about all those things, and it is about how we put them together. Call is about how we juggle, balance and weigh out our various commitments and priorities for the good of God’s world.  

In a totally different section of the magazine, there was a one pager called “What Should I do with My Extra Hour?  (On November 7, we all get an extra hour due to the ending of Daylight Savings time.)  The article listed various options for how you might spend that extra hour, gathered into categories like “Doing Something Charitable”, “Exercising Your Body or Brain”, “Work Around the House”, etc. etc.


Here is my suggestion for the editorial board of O Magazine:  Shift that article into the “Call” Section of the magazine.  Because these kind of decisions can also be call decisions.  Balancing time spent on behalf of others with time spent on ourselves is one of the biggest areas of call we face.  Let’s draw on our deepest wisdom and the wisdom of our faith traditions to decide how we spend our time, even an extra hour in November.

Until I read the article, I had not thought how I would spend my extra hour.  I am going to ponder that question now.  More than likely, I will still use it for an extra hour of sleep.  But if that is true, it the decision will be coming from a deeper place in me.

Call is about all of life.

Doug Wysockey-Johnson
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