Callings We Don't Choose: Deanna Thompson

How does experience with trauma inform, and transform, our vocations? Our guest, Deanna Thompson, helps us understand how suffering shapes us and how our vocational frameworks might integrate sadness. Deanna’s journey with incurable cancer informs her role not only as a scholar and writer, but as a professor of religion at St. Olaf College, where she explores with students how vocation can be framed by unresolved questions and the paradoxes of despair and hope. Throughout this conversation, Deanna expands our views of the world—via digital platforms, interfaith friendships, and the communal experience of sadness alongside joy. Deanna poignantly captures what it means to be called to “this” rather than “that,” and how to accept the callings we didn’t expect or choose. The conversation evokes the experience of sharing sacred ground.