Let Your Life Speak
by Parker J. Palmer
Chapter II
"Now I Become Myself"
Copyright ©2000 by Jossey-Bass Inc., Publishers
San Francisco, CA

work daily with the things of the world. Making pottery, for
example, involves more than telling the clay what to become.
The clay presses back on the potter's hands, telling her what it
can and cannot do--and if she fails to listen, the outcome will
be both frail and ungainly. Engineering involves more than
telling materials what they must do. If the engineer does not
honor the nature of the steel or the wood or the stone, his fail-
ure will go well beyond aesthetics: the bridge or the building
will collapse and put human life in peril.

The human self also has a nature, limits as well as poten-
tials. If you seek vocation without understanding the material
you are working with, what you build with your life will be
ungainly and may well put lives in peril, your own and some
of those around you. "Faking it" in the service of high values
is no virtue and has nothing to do with vocation. It is an igno-
rant, sometimes arrogant, attempt to override one's nature,
and it will always fail.

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. As we do so, we will not only find the joy that every
human being seeks -- we will also find our path of authentic
service in the world. True vocation joins self and service, as
Frederick Buechner asserts when he defines vocation as "the
place where your deep gladness meets the world's deep need."3

Buechner's definition starts with the self and moves
toward the needs of the world: it begins, wisely, where voca-
tion begins--not in what the world needs (which is every-

LET YOUR LIFE SPEAK

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