Let Your Life Speak
by Parker J. Palmer
Chapter II
"Now I Become Myself"

I first learned about vocation growing up in the church.
I value much about the religious tradition in which I was
raised: its humility about its own convictions, its respect for
the world's diversity, its concern for justice. 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 voca-
tion, 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.

That concept of vocation is rooted in a deep distrust of
selfhood, in the belief that the sinful self will always be "self-
ish" unless corrected by external forces of virtue. It is a notion
that made me feel inadequate to the task of living my own life,
creating guilt about the distance between who I was and who
I was supposed to be, leaving me exhausted as I labored to
close the gap.

Today I understand vocation quite differently--not as a
goal to be achieved but as a gift to be received. Discovering
vocation does not mean scrambling toward some prize just
beyond my reach but accepting the treasure of true self I
already possess. 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.

It is a strange gift, this birthright gift of self. Accepting it
turns out to be even more demanding than attempting to

LET YOUR LIFE SPEAK

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Copyright ©2000 (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Inc.) This material is used by permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Parker Palmer's new book, A Hidden Wholeness, will be available at www.wiley.com in September 2004.

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