Art is by Helen Taylor.
Parker Palmer recalls that it took the birth of his granddaughter for him to understand that each of us is born with a birthright gift. The baby “did not show up as raw material to be shaped into whatever image the world might want her to take,” writes Palmer. “She arrived with her own gifted form, with the shape of her own sacred soul.”
The Bible calls it the image of God in which we are all created, says Palmer.
Unfortunately the world conspires to draw us away from those early gifts. We wear masks that are not ours, we try to emulate our heroes, we learn and subscribe to what is acceptable and what is not in our families, in our careers, in our social lives.
But those are not the ways to discover our own true selves, the birthright gifts we entered life with, says Palmer. Our quest for our true selves, our inner selves, comes not by following the “shoulds” and “oughts.” The question to be asked is “Who am I? What is my nature.”
Chapter 2 Questions for reflection.
One of the ways we begin to dig for our true selves is to comb the clues of our childhood. When he was a boy, Palmer thought he wanted to be a naval aviator. He spent hours making airplanes out of balsa wood as many boys did in those years, and he loved to sketch diagrams and drawings of airplanes. But the most fun was turning the sketches into 8- and 12-page books. Ah, there was the clue to the gift that eventually revealed itself in his writing and creating books, which has been his true vocation. (pgs 13-15).
What were the things that intrigued you as a child? What did you love to do? What were you particularly good at?
“Vocation,” says Palmer, “at its deepest level is something we can’t not do” (pg 25). We can’t explain it to ourselves or others. But it is nonetheless compelling.
Some of us were taught “if you’re grinning, you’re sinning.” But that is not the teaching of the Church, nor is it the example of Jesus. Sometimes we serve the Church and God’s people in ways we would rather not. And that is good and worthy work. But it is not vocation. Remember that Frederick Buechner said vocation is where your great passion meets the world’s great need.
What are you happiest doing? What are you good at? What great need of the world can you help assuage even if it is in a very small way? What brings forth your energy?
Palmer speaks of his “native way of being in the world” (pg 21.) Some call it the “thread” that runs throughout our lives. It is the way we most often respond in any given situation. In Palmer’s case he writes, “Make me a cleric or a CEO, a poet or a politico, and teaching is what I will do.”
What is your “native way of being”? Are you the one who will organize any group you are in? Will you always respond with poetry? Are you compelled to pick up hammer and nail for every loose board in the fence?
“Everything in the universe has a nature, which means limits as well as potentials,” writes Palmer (pg 15). “Our deepest calling is to grow into our own authentic self-hood whether or not it conforms to some image of who we ought to be” (pg 16). Palmer recalls the old Hasidic tale of Rabbi Zusya who said, “In the coming world, they will not ask me: ‘Why were you not Moses? They will ask me: ‘Why were you not Zusya?” (pg 11).
Do you recognize your “native way of being?” What keeps you from living it?
More resources
Now I Become Myself
The full poem from May Sarton, an excerpt from which Parker Palmer opens chapter 2 of let Your Life Speak.
Found in All Poetry.
The Wisdom Years 