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Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation

Book by Parker J. Palmer · 31 quotes · Vocation, World, Self

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Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation Quotes

“Here, I think, is another clue to finding true self and vocation: we must withdraw the negative projections we make on people and situations - projections that serve mainly to mask our fears about ourselves- and acknowledge and embrace our own liabilities and limits.”

PeopleThinkingSelfSituationLimitsFindingsNegativeEmbraceAcknowledgeMaskTrue SelfClueVocationProjectionLiability
Book:Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation
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“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.”

WorldHumansSelfJoyGrowsHuman BeingsPathOughtIntegrityCallingConformHoodAuthentic Self
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“We must come together in ways that respect the solitude of the soul that avoid the unconscious violence we do when we try to save each other that evoke our capacity to hold another life without dishonoring its mystery never trying to coerce the other into meeting our own needs.”

WayNeedsTryingSoulTogetherViolenceMysterySolitudeCapacityMeetingsUnconsciousEvokeAnother LifeCoerce
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“Vocation does not come from willfulness. It comes from listening. I must listen to my life and try to understand what it is truly about-quite apart from what I would like it to be about-or my life will never represent anything real in the world, no matter how earnest my intentions…..Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am. I must listen for the truths and values at the heart of my own identity, not the standards by which I must live-but the standards by which I cannot help but live if I am living my own life.”

IfsWorldWantTryingHeartDoeI CanRealMatterHelpingValuesMy OwnIdentityListeningStandardsIntentionWho I AmVocationEarnestMy Own LifeWillfulness
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“By surviving passages of doubt and depression on the vocational journey, I have become clear about at least one thing: self-care is never a selfish act -- it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer to others. Anytime we can listen to true self and give it the care it requires, we do so not only for ourselves but for the many others whose lives we touch.”

GivingSelfCareEarthClearDoubtOne ThingJourneyOffersSelfishPassagesSelf CareTrue SelfSurvivingStewardshipSelfish Acts
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“The human self also has a nature, limits as well as potentials. 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 ignorant, sometimes arrogant, attempt to override one's nature, and it will always fail.”

VirtueHuman NatureServiceVocationLimitationsHuman Self
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“Depression demands that we reject simplistic answers, both 'religious' and 'scientific,' and learn to embrace mystery, something our culture resists. . . . Embracing the mystery of depression does not mean passivity or resignation. It means moving into a field of forces that seem alien but is in fact one's deepest self. It means waiting, watching, listening, suffering, and gathering whatever self-knowledge one can—and then making choices based on that knowledge, no matter how difficult. One begins the slow walk back to health by choosing each day things that enliven one's selfhood and resisting things that do not.”

IdentityDepressionMental HealthSelf CareAuthentic LivingSelfhood
Book:Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation
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“If we lived close to nature in an agricultural society, the seasons as metaphor and fact would continually frame our lives. But the master metaphor of our era does not come from agriculture - it comes from manufacturing. We do not believe that we 'grow' our lives - we believe that we 'make' them. Just listen to how we use the word in everyday speech: we make time, make friends, make meaning, make money, make a living, make love.”

LifeRealityMetaphorGrowMake
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“But if I am to let my life speak things I want to hear, things I would gladly tell others, I must also let it speak things I do not want to hear and would never tell anyone else! My life is not only about my strengths and virtues; it is also about my liabilities and my limits, my trespasses and my shadow. An inevitable though often ignored dimension of the quest for 'wholeness' is that we must embrace what we dislike or find shameful about ourselves as well as what we are confident and proud of.”

FailureWholenessInner SelfInner VoiceThe Self
Book:Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation
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