“The gift you carry for others is not an attempt to save the world but to fully belong to it. It’s not possible to save the world by trying to save it. You need to find what is genuinely yours to offer the world before you can make it a better place. Discovering your unique gift to bring to your community is your greatest opportunity, and challenge. The offering of that gift — your true self — is the most you can do to love and serve the world. And it is all the world needs.
Vocation does not come from willfulness. It comes from listening…That insight is hidden in the word vocation itself, which is rooted in the Latin for “voice.”
Vocation does not mean a goal I pursue. It means a calling that I hear…I must listen for the truths and values at the heart of my own identity.
Today I understand vocation…not as a goal to be achieved, but as a gift to be received. Discovering vocation does not mean scrambling toward some prize just beyond my reach but accepting the treasure of true self I already possess. Vocation does not come from a voice ‘out there’ calling me to become something I am not. It comes from a voice ‘in here’ calling me to be the person I was born to be, to fulfill the original selfhood given me at birth by God.
One sign that something is your vocation is that you would do it for free, even if there is no reward or social payoff. That clarifies a vocation quite quickly…”
~ from Richard Rohr’s contemplative prayer: daily meditations ~
my vocation right now: making peace with perennially untied shoelaces
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