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How does a life grow? Palmer listens to the voice of vocation

Toward the end of Let Your Life Speak, author and educator Parker Palmer grieves the shift from agricultural metaphors to manufacturing metaphors in American culture. We no longer frame our lives in terms of seasonal change and rhythm, he says; we frame our lives in terms of how we must construct them. A Chinese child will ask its parent, “How does a baby grow?” But an American child will wonder, “How do you make a baby?” (97) This loss of awareness of our dependence on a power that guides and balances us has led, Palmer argues, to a crisis in American culture.

Parker’s book attempts to address this crisis by exploring the struggle–and possibilities–of vocation. On his reading, vocation is not a goal that one must pursue. It is not, in other words, something that one creates by sheer willpower or “grim determination” (4). Rather, vocation is a voice inside a person that speaks in mysterious ways and whispers to her whom she is and whom she might become. “Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am” (4). If we can learn to master the discipline of listening to this voice, we will, Palmer suggests, wake up one day and see the secret of our lives “hidden in plain sight” (55). In other words, we will no longer be drained by the weight of unmet expectations or unfulfilled goals. Instead, we will see our lives–right here, right now–as works of art: creative, colorful, imperfect (as all paintings are), and deeply satisfying.

Palmer’s book is a series of essays devoted to this theme of letting one’s life speak. He addresses with painful clarity not only the joys that his own journey has brought, but also the failures, the losses, and the ambivalence. Sometimes doors close behind him before others have opened in front. Sometimes his professional choices are made not from a careful listening to his vocational rhythms, but from a need to bolster his own ego.

Palmer makes this latter point in a humorous way when he writes about an offer he once received to become president of a small college. At the time, he was living in a Quaker community, engaging in social activism and teaching in independent settings. Immensely flattered by the college’s offer, Palmer gathered a group of Quaker friends to discuss his new professional option–or, as he admits, to brag about the offer. As they asked him questions about what he would like most about being a president, however, Palmer began to feel less confident. The only way he could answer the question was by negation: “Well, I would not like having to give up my writing and teaching. . . I would not like the politics of the presidency, never knowing who your real friends are. . .”

As his litany continued, he finally came up with one reason he would like being the president: “‘Well,’ said I, in the smallest voice I possess, ‘I guess what I’d like most is getting my picture in the paper with the word president under it” (46). At this, one Quaker friend replied carefully, “Parker, can you think of an easier way to get your picture in the paper?” Needless to say, Palmer quickly realized that his vocational voice was not calling him to become the president. His desire to accept their offer was a desire to boost his ego. And to accept a job on that basis would have been, he reflects, a disaster both for him and the school.

Parker’s book closes on a communal note. If we can claim the self that is our “birthright gift,” we find not only individual fulfillment, but also relationship with others. Vocational satisfaction frees us to enter into community and serve our neighbors, because we no longer need the neighbor to fill a longing or a gap in ourselves. The end of the vocational journey, then, is not simply personal peace. It is a call to renewed action with and for those whose lives have not been allowed to speak. This is the true vocation, Palmer concludes; it is the truth to which all our work is pointing.

Let Your Life Speak: Listening to the Voice of Vocation. By Parker Palmer. Jossey-Bass, 128pp. $18.00.

[ Posted by Stacia Brown at February 1, 2001 08:43 AM | More Book & Film Reviews articles ]

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