Van Oosting And Palmer Analysis

Both James Van Oosting and Parker Palmer have their own slightly different views of what a vocation truly is, however at the core of their philosophical beliefs there are many commonalities that cannot go unnoticed. These commonalities provide their readers with a core belief of what a vocation truly is, and provides one with enough room for their own interpretation of what a vocation truly is to them. When looking at the two writers separately, they each propose four fundamental ideas for vocation. One idea from one writer can almost perfectly find a matching idea from the other author, supporting the idea that amongst groups of people there is the same foundation or principles behind a vocation and what it truly is. Not only that but they …show more content…
Both Van Oosting and Palmer believed that each and every person has a gift, however ever to Palmer this special gift was called the gift of the self. (Parker Palmer) Palmer calls this gift a birthright gift (Parker Palmer), meaning that everyone has the right to this gift as soon as they are born, and Van Oosting simply calls this gift a “special gift” that should not be confused with a skill or a talent. (Van Oosting) Palmer’s idea that the gift of self is a birthright gift also implies that it is not a skill or a talent, making it vastly more similar to Van Oosting’s idea of the gift. Upon further inspection of the two different-but-similar ideas, one can conclude that both Palmer and Van Oosting felt that each and every person is born with a gift that will aid them in finding or fulfilling their vocation, however this gift is not something that can be learned or practiced, but rather something one finds upon vast amounts of self-reflection and …show more content…
Palmer essentially forces his readers to ask themselves, “whose am I” (Parker Palmer) in order to understand who they are serving and offering their gift to. Van Oosting, on the other hand, describes God as a caller who calls one to a certain vocation. (James Van Oosting) Both Palmer and Palmer’s ideas the caller and “whose am I” (Parker Palmer) and Van Oosting’s idea of the caller (Van Oosting) lead the vocation-seeking person to a similar goal. According to God’s word each and every man is made in His image and is one with Him, and therefore it may not just be God who calls one to a vocation, but anyone else in society. Many see these two views as contrasting, however Van Oosting never mentioned that the caller had to be God himself, but rather he simple stated that, “in biblical narratives, the caller has a name – Yawhweh, God, Jesus. The caller’s voice is heard as something outside the personal called.” (Van Oosting) What Van Oosting truly was emphasizing in this line was that the voice is not heard from the person being called, but rather from some outside source that the Bible often attributes to God. This outside source may in fact be a group of people in need, and this people very much so are God calling for one to help both Him and His