Currently on Tuesday nights a group of guys are meeting to talk about Parker Palmer's "Let Your Life Speak." It is a book full of wisdom about finding one's true calling.
Beyond economic ups and downs, many of us seek to have careers and jobs that give us a sense of purpose and that expresses something significant about who we are. When our "role" matches up with our "soul," we can move from simple having a job to finding our vocation (our true callings).
Here is a snippet for you today:
"I first learned about vocation growing up in the church...But the idea of vocation I picked up in those circles created distortion until I grew strong enough to discard it. I mean the idea that vocation, or calling, comes from a voice external to ourselves, a voice of moral demand that asks us to become someone we are not yet--someone different, someone better, someone just beyond our reach.
It is a notion that made me feel inadequate to the tak of living my own life, creating guilt about the distance between who I was and who I was supposed to be. Today, I understand vocation quite differently--not as a goal to be achieved but as a gift to be received. Vocation does not come from a voice 'out there' calling me to become something I am not. It comes from a voice 'in here' calling me to be the person I was born to be, to fulfill the original selfhood given me at birth by God."
- In what ways is Palmer's insight about vocation similar or different to ways you understand vocation?
