Vocation and Sabbath

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.

That insight is hidden in the word vocation itself, which is rooted in the Latin for "voice." Vocation does not mean a goal that I pursue. It is a calling that I hear. 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.

Behind this understanding of vocation is a truth that the ego does not want to hear because it threatens the ego's turf: everyone has a life to live that is different from the "I" of daily consciousness, a life that is trying to live through the "I" who is its vessel. This is what the poet knows and what every wisdom tradition teaches: there is a great gulf between the way my ego wants to identify me, with its protective masks and self serving fictions, and my true self. 

- Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak 

Each of us bears a sense of calling, even if it is only voiced by the question, "Why am I here?" This simple question is the seed of vocation. We bear this question, or questions like this, every day. When we do not allow space to quiet our own questions, to sit in silence, to listen for the breath of life, the voice of God, we deny the answer to our deepest longings. We remain in a pregnant state, bearing the weight of the question without the birth of an answer or the life to live it.

Vocation needs Sabbath. Without Sabbath, vocation cannot be fully realized. Without Sabbath, Ego rules our days, our questions, our answers, our identity. Our ego fashions idols of immediate gratification, busying us, but never completing us; gorging us, but never really filling us.

We need Sabbath because we need the voice of God that sometimes whispers (sometimes screams) at us to realize another way to be. What are the truths and values at the heart of your identity that tell you who you are? Silence your ego, empty your mind, open your ears, and listen for the Voice. Let the great Intercessor, the Midwife, meet you where you are and bring life to the answers that await you.

Emmanuel, God is with us.

Cappella degli Scrovegni, Midwife Salome