From the perpetually best-selling manual for job hunters comes this: "Vocation or Calling implies Someone who calls, and . . . the concept of Mission with relationship to our whole life lands us inevitably in the lap of God."

So writes Richard Nelson Bolles in an appendix to his What Color Is Your Parachute? a book that has enjoyed phenomenal success since 1970. He continues: "Your first Mission here on earth is . . . to seek out and find, in daily-even hourly-communication, the One from whom your Mission is derived."

Dick Bolles has found his "Mission," including over thirty-seven years in ordained ministry, half of it in Episcopal parishes. When he was let go from a cathedral staff, the victim of a budget cut, he learned the hard way about security and contentment. He retains a strong interest in fellow clergy, however, remarking, "I originally wrote Parachute exclusively for ministers, and four million other people happened to buy it!"

What ...