The Call of Our True Nature

...Ask me whether
what I have done is my life...
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.
   -William Stafford, Ask Me

   At five, I wanted to be a cowboy. At fifteen, I wanted to be President and give speeches like Winston Churchill. At twenty-five, I was a trial lawyer and wanted to be like Martin Luther King. At thirty-five, I was president of a hospital and wanted to be an artist. At forty-five, I was president of an Ohio hospital system and wanted to be a national television star. At fifty-five, I was president of a Tennessee hospital system and wanted to be a minister.
   Ask me whether what I have done is my life. It's a challenging question. How would you answer it?...

   Parker Palmer offers us a way to find our answers in his beautiful book, Let Your Life Speak (Jossey-Bass - 2000) The title comes from an old Quaker saying and Palmer finds the statement profound.

   Across America today, caregivers will let their lives speak either through meeting the needs of others or through holding back their gifts and doing the minimum. Holding back may mean they are in a career that is distant from their true nature.

  We try on the costumes of different roles across our childhood and start making some decisions as adults. How can we discern if our choices are true to our nature or whether we are acting a role someone else assigned to us? "Vocation does not mean a goal I pursue," Palmer says. "But a calling I hear." He quotes twenty-one words from May Sarton:

Now I become myself

It's taken time, many years and places.

I have been dissolved and shaken,

Worn other people's faces...

   Why is it so difficult to hear our true nature? We ask children and teenagers (and were once asked ourselves): What are you going to do? What are you going to be? And in these questions, we hear the expectations of others. A boy says he wants to be a dancer and may sense the disapproval of his father. A girl says she wants to become a doctor and may feel the doubts of her mother or her teachers.

   Frightened by disapproval, fearful of rejection, uncertain of our gifts, we may surrender our true nature and adopt the choices others foist upon us. Mid-career, we may find ourselves wondering if our vocation is truly our calling. This answer can only be found by peeling away others expectations to rediscover our nature.

   There is a further challenge. Imbued with a sense of society's loftier values, we may feel ourselves asking what we ought to do rather than who we are. There is, as well, the perplexing problem of our particular potential. I may desire the career of a major league baseball player. Yet at some point I must face the truth of my skill level. If I feel called to the major leagues and am blocked by lack of talent or injury or other bad luck, how do I honor my nature?

  Several years back, I was fascinated to watch Michael Jordan, the greatest basketball player in history, try his hand at baseball. Relatively speaking, he wasn't very good and was quckly demoted to the Birmingham Barons of the minor leagues. A legendary basketball player, Jordan was only a relatively ordinary baseball player. Clearly, he was best at basketball & abandoned the diamond to return to the court. But was baseball his nature or basketball? What about accounting, school teaching, business leadership?

    Ultimately, the question may not be what job we choose, but whether we are able to express our truest and best selves across each day, whatever our job. Palmer, in quoting Frederick Buechner, offers us the best wisdom I've ever read on this subject: "Vocation [is] the place where your deep gladness meets the world's deep need."

   This is the great gift caregiving. Today, if caregiving is your nature, you can be present to your own gladness as you meet the needs of others. This doesn't mean it's easy, but it does suggest that joy will be present to you if your are pursuing your calling.

    Already , at the age of two, my grandson is beginning to try out careers. At the moment, he's not sure yet whether he wants to be a pirate or a baseball player. I guess if he chose Pittsburg, he could be both. But as a native Bostonian, he'll likely always be a fan of the Red Sox. (I haven't suggested he be a cowboy yet.)

   Whatever his ultimate choice, I hope he will let his life speak by being present to his truest nature. I hope you will do the same, lettling your deepest gladness meet some part of the world's need today and every day. 

Erie Chapman, Editor

Reflective Practice and Subject for Circle Group Presence:

1) Do you think of your work as primarily a calling or mostly a job? What is the difference?

2) How is your best nature expressed in your work?

3) Do you experience a sense of inner joy as you go about your work?

4) Are you expressing your best gifts in your work or do you find yourself holding back?

5) What would it take to express more of your nature in your work?