The Change a Difference Makes

This chapter offers a detailed description of the many ways that college students encounter difference, demonstrating how this tends to shape their understanding of their future directions in life. The author emphasizes the communal and reciprocal aspects of reflection and discernment on our callings, drawing especially on Jewish traditions in sacred texts and in modern thought. The chapter includes a description of the author’s own encounter with difference, which made for a significant change in her own vocational journey. This chapter introduces the term lifestance, which is used here (and by a number of contributors of other chapters in the same volume) to account for a wide range of perspectives, without necessarily assuming that these will always be connected with “religion.”