Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation

In some ways this reader feels like the mortician at a birthday gig: the reviews of Parker Palmer's Let Your Life Speak are almost to a person adulatory - and so, to a point, they should be. In a US world of achieverism - to coin a word - Palmer's self-confessedly Mertonesque call to the journey and the voice within (the influence of a spirituality of Inner Light) would surely be oasis in a desert landscape.

But Palmer writes for the extrovert (79). Strangely, in the ecclesiastical circles in which I move, extroversion is a minority perspective. Despite experiencing a vocation to leadership, the leaders of faith communities with whom I introspectively and all but apologetically run shoulders are predominately introverts. This may be a fundamental difference between the US and my spheres of OZ/NZ, or it may be a difference between Palmer's sphere of origin and my introspective Anglicanism/Episodecopalianism: who knows? But his world is very different to mine.

Palmer's call to the interior life therefore leave me cold. Get me out of there! Teach me instead to strive for the stars, teach me to dance, teach me to yell from the rooftop of my quivering faith! This book was not written for this wallflower faith with which I struggle day by day.

But it was written and written well for someone I am not. It may not, if I may grasp at one of the world's worst cliches, scratch where I itch, but I not despite by ego the Universal Man. It clearly touches those in a skin vastly different tonne - and yes I hear the egotism of my decrials! And, when at last I turn to the final chapter, I hear at last a voice that speaks to me
So no: not my book. But yes, a good book. But one that somehow passes this reader by - trapped in all the arrogance of that observation. ( )

It was quite a treat to re-read this Quaker classic for the 2012 QPCC coming in a few weeks. I first read this book right before I entered seminary and it's ideas of calling angpd gifts were new to me. Although I was familiar with Merton and Rilke and Dillard, Frederick Buechner was new. I found his often quoted definition of vocation, "the place where your deep gladness meets the world's greatest need" to resonate within me even to today.

If you have not yet read this slim volume, I think you will find something of value within its pages. ( )

Certain books prove that it takes depth of experience and a lot of contemplation in order to be both profound and concise. Parker Palmer is one such case. If his experiences haven't been as harrowing as Frankl's or as isolated as Merton's, they are in some ways more directly relevant to the modern experience of career's as a quest for fulfillment. Palmer has been an academic, a social worker, a teacher, and a writer, not to mention what can only be described as a Quaker-monastic. The summary sentence is: "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." The full work is elegant, and every chapter will give you a thought that merits reflection. I recommend it. ( )

Very few inspirational books are truly inspiring, this one is. ( )

A very different way of looking into one's vocation. An awesome timeless read. ( )