What Is Your Life Saying?

As I search for 'what I want to be when I grow up,' I've spent time discussing my life options with a variety of people...friends, family, my clergy. My rector gave me this little book, and I think it's changed my life! Parker J. Palmer is a Quaker, an educator and writer who wrote this 109-page helper for those of us who are 'listening for the voice of vocation' in our lives. I've read it three times already, but when Mary told me it was mine to keep, I started it a fourth...this time highlighting and underlining those words I want to remember. Palmer's premise is that we are all born with a nature, God-given gifts, talents, and ways to be in the world. When we ignore that nature (and most of us do!) and do what others, the world, our society tells us we should do, our lives become at least incongruent, at most desperately unhappy. Our jobs should ideally reflect our innate nature and not all the false skills and tricks we learn to get by and get along. Palmer begins his book with a poem by William Stafford where the poet  says: "Ask me whether what I have done is my life." A profound question...is your life your job, your occupation? Is what you do for a living right now how you want your life to be remembered? Put another way, Palmer instructs us: "Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you." He goes on to describe what vocation/life calling looks like, what it is and what it isn't. He also tells the reader about his own struggle with vocation that led to two bouts of severe depression. Even if depression isn't an issue for you, Palmer's depression holds lessons to be learned by anyone. This book could be the perfect gift for a high school or college graduate, someone who is launched in a career, but is unhappy with it, someone who has lost a job and is looking for a way, or someone who is retiring and looking for a fulfilling way to spend the second half of their life.