Let your life speak: listening for the voice of vocation

Parker J. Palmer

Jossey-Bass, 2000 - Education - 117 pages

"Is the life I am living the same as the life that wants to live in me?" With this searching question, Parker Palmer begins an insightful and moving meditation on finding one's true calling. Let Your Life Speak is an openhearted gift to anyone who seeks to live authentically.The book's title is a time-honored Quaker admonition, usually taken to mean "Let the highest truths and values guide everything you do." But Palmer reinterprets those words, drawing on his own search for selfhood. "Before you tell your life what you intAnd to do with it," he writes, "listen for what it intAnds to do with you. Before you tell your life what truths and values you have decided to live up to, let your life tell you what truths you embody, what values you represent."Vocation does not come from willfulness, no matter how noble one's intentions. It comes from listening to and accepting "true self" with its limits as well as its potentials. Sharing stories of frailty and strength, of darkness and light, Palmer shows that vocation is not a goal to be achieved but a gift to be received.As we live more deeply into the selfhood that is our birthright gift, we find not only personal fulfillment. We find communion with others and ways of serving the world's deepest needs.A Compassionate and Compelling Meditation on Discovering Your Path in LifeWith wisdom, compassion, and gentle humor, Parker J. Palmer invites us to listen to the inner teacher and follow its leadings toward a sense of meaning and purpose. Telling stories from his own life and the lives of others who have made a difference, he shares insights gained from darkness and depression as well as fulfillment and joy, illuminating a pathway toward vocation for all who seek the true calling of their lives."Parker Palmer's writing is like a high country stream-clear, vital, honest. If your life seems to be passing you by, or you cannot see the way ahead, immerse yourself in the wisdom of these pages and allow it

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - Narshkite - LibraryThing

Astonishing. This is my field, I read a lot about vocation for work, and this is quiet simply the best book on the topic I have ever read. If the bad poetry were excised it would be perfect, but its ...

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - bohannon - LibraryThing

Palmer takes the question of "vocation" very broadly--which I appreciate. The book speaks from a what I would characterize as a liberal Quaker perspective, and does so in the language and mannerisms ...

Contents

• Gratitudes viz I Listening to Life: 1
• Now Become Myself: 9
• When Way Closes: 37

About the author

PARKER J. PALMER is senior associate of the American Association for Higher Education and senior advisor to the Fetzer Institute. In 1998, he was named one of the thirty most influential senior leaders in higher education. Author of such widely praised books as The Courage to Teach and To Know As We Are Known, he holds a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. He is a member of the Religious Society of FriAnds (Quaker) and lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Let your life speak: listening for the voice of vocation
• Author: Parker J. Palmer
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass, 2000
• ISBN: 0787947350, 9780787947354
• Length: 117 pages
• Subjects: Education / Counseling / Vocational Guidance; Religion / Christian Education / General; Religion / Christian Life / Professional Growth; Religion / Christian Life / Spiritual Growth; Religion / Christian Theology / General; Social Science / Sociology / General; Social Science / Sociology of Religion; Vocation; Vocation - Christianity; Vocation/ Christianity