“If we are unfaithful to true self, we will extract a price from others. We will make promises we cannot keep, build houses from flimsy stuff, conjure dreams that devolve into nightmares, and other people will suffer - if we are unfaithful to true self.” TruthCommunityCallingVocationAuthentic Living Book:Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation Source: Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation
“So I lined up the loftiest ideals I could find and set out to achieve them. The results were rarely admirable, often laughable, and sometimes grotesque. But always they were unreal, a distortion of my true self -- as must be the case when one lives from the outside in, not the inside out. I had simply found a "noble" way to live a life that was not my own, a life spent imitating heroes instead of listening to my heart.” Let Your Life Speak Author:Parker Palmer
“My youthful understanding of "Let your life speak" led me to conjure up the highest values I could imagine and then try to conform my life to them whether they were mine or not. I that sounds like what we are supposed to do with values, it is because that is what we are too often taught. There is a simplistic brand of moralism among us that wants to reduce the ethical life to making a list, checking it twice -- against the index in some best-selling book of virtues, perhaps -- and then trying very hard to be not naughty but nice.” Let Your Life Speak Author:Parker Palmer
“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.” Let Your Life Speak Author:Parker Palmer