I have found Frederick Buechner's words "vocation is the place where your
deep gladness meets the world's deep need" very powerful. They speak to
me of the uniqueness of each of us and open the possibility for every one to
lead a fulfilled life. For me that was Jesus' vision - all of us knowing our
gifts and having the opportunity to share them, each of us accepting one another
and ourselves for who we are.
My journey has had several forks in the road, but it was in 1994 when I was last presented with the opportunity to decide what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I was 50 years old and was suddenly unemployed - me, who had followed all the rules and worked hard to be a success. It was a blow to my self-esteem to say nothing of the affect on my self-confidence. In retrospect, what a gift that was! My life journey was about to take a new direction.
In his book Let your Life Speak, Parker Palmer says the challenge in life is to learn who we really are and identify our vocation. He suggests that vocation comes from within. We are born with certain God-given gifts, but where we are to use them isn't always obvious to us.
How do we become clear about who we are? First, we have to recognize that it is not selfish to care for ourselves. Palmer says self care "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."
Social pressures in general and our educational system in particular both pressure us to fit in. Success is defined for us at a very young age. We introduce children to pass-fail concepts as soon as they begin school, if not before. Our parents and others have dreams for us, and it is sometimes easier to comply and conform than it is to fight against the flow in order to find our authentic selves.
The Christian church has worked very hard to have us all conform - to have common beliefs, to share creeds, to understand the role of tithing, and to nurture our relationship with God in the same way. Stephen Covey, Parker J. Palmer, John Spong, Marcus Borg, and Diaramid Ó Murchú are a few of the voices that are telling us we need to stop trying to fit everyone into the same box. We need to put our focus back on the individual. When we do, we all become richer.
In his letter to the church in Corinth, Paul talked about the importance of gifts, and insisted we need all of them working together to create Christ's new community. The problem is, so often we are afraid to really empower one another. It would mean that things might evolve in ways we can't control, and those of us raised in the industrial era like to be in control. We want to know what every one is doing and what the final result will be.
Stephen Covey makes the point that this is precisely what is wrong with the vast majority of organizations, including many congregations. We are trying to meet the needs of people in the information age with structures designed for the industrial era. His book The 8th Habit starts with the admonition to find our own voice, to find out who we truly are. We are hardwired at birth with gifts from God. What we have to do is to exercise the freedom to choose how to live those gifts.
When we have discovered our own voice, the next step is to inspire others to find their voice. It's a modern version of "Love your neighbour as yourself."
I see this as a very powerful message for the church; our role is to help individuals find their voice so they can then in turn inspire others to find theirs. Covey identifies spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical as the four "intelligences" we each have. It is important to understand these and keep them in balance. Our emphasis may be on the spiritual, but we can't ignore the other dimensions if we want people to be healthy.
Parker Palmer emphasizes the need for us to begin this journey. "The world needs people with the patience and the passion to make that pilgrimage not only for their own sake but also as a social and political act." The world still waits for the truth that will set it free.
Marianne Williamson, an American spiritual author, says that the world needs us to be faithful to the peace within. "The only way to spread one's influence wide is to learn to go deep…. It is time to die to who we used to be and to become instead who we are capable of being. That is the gift that awaits us now: the chance to become who we really are."
Clair and I wrote our book Prisms in response to our belief that people need to find their gifts and their passions. Both of us have the privilege today of working in a vocation where we find our deep gladness is meeting the world's need. There are times when I almost have to pinch myself to see if it's really me. My journey has taken me places I would have found frightening. It wasn't that I had a plan to become a consultant to congregations, or that I would write articles and books, or that I would create workshops and courses. I set out to share what I knew with others in the hope that they could see possibilities for themselves. Everything else has evolved from there.
What would it take for your congregation to become a place where people are truly supported as they find their voice ? a place where the emphasis is on supporting individuals rather than the building, the worship, or the organizational structure. We believe that this is the mission for the church in the 21st Century. It is an 180º turn for many congregations. The challenge is to make the change from how we have been to what we need to be ? not unlike when Moses led the people of Israel from slavery to independence. The problem is that we don't have 40 years, we need to act now.
Congregational Life Newsletter. May 2005. Vol. 11 No. 4.