Tag Archive - Parker Palmer

Reclaimining Our “Birthright Gifts”

March 11, 2009 in Ministry-Theology, Therapy-Psychology with 4 Comments

hand_of_love“We arrive in this world with birthright gifts–then we spend the first half of our lives abandoning them or letting other disabuse us of them. As young people, we are surrounded by expectations that may have little to do with who we really are, expectations held by people who are not trying to discern our selfhood but to fit us into slots. In families, schools, workplaces, and religious communities, we are trained away from true self toward images of acceptability; under social pressures like racism and sexism our original shape is deformed beyond recognition; and we ourselves, driven by fear, too many often betray true self to gain the approval of others.” (Let Your Life Speak by Parker Palmer, pp. 12)

As I continue to revisit Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation by Parker Palmer, I was really struck by this quote of his. At the age of 34 I’m just now beginning to realize how much of what I do and have done is driven by the pressure to fit in. By the pressure to please others. By the pressure to perform. By the pressure to climb to the top. A lot of those expectations drove me to do some really great things, but as I reflect more on my life, those great things have not always been congruent with who I am, or what Parker would refer to as one’s true self.

As the son of a pastor I was slotted early on to continue the vocation of ministry. Those were not the expectations of my father or probably most of my family, but those were some of the expectations from those around me, and the unsconscious expectations from myself to veer toward a vocation that would be praised and revered. I think that is what drove me early on to enter into ministry, but that is hopefully what no longer keeps me there.

Confession: It is only after some extensive self-searching, prayer, working with my therapist, spiritual mentors, etc. have I come to embrace my “birthright gifts” and become less concerned with the expectations of others.

What “birthright gifts” do you have that you felt like you have abandoned early on in your life? How did others “disabuse” you of them?

Have you, or are you returning to them? Why? How?

In Violation of our True Self

March 9, 2009 in Ministry-Theology, Therapy-Psychology with 5 Comments

identityI have been returning time and time again to one of my favorite books on the topic of identity and vocation, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation by Parker Palmer. I first read the book in 2002 when I was finishing up my M. Div. at Fuller Theological Seminary at it greatly impacted me and some of my friends. I have since read it over a couple of times and I’m about to finish it again. It is very powerful. It is a paradigm shifting book.

Parker Palmer makes the insightful comment that:

“True self (this is what Parker also refers to as the “imago dei” in us), when violated, will always resist us, sometimes at great cost, holding our lives in check until we honor its truth.” (pp. 4)

As we find ourselves in very different places in life (graduating from college, looking for jobs, looking for second careers, stuck in a career, struggling in a marriage, trying to overcome an addiction, trying to raise kids, etc.) we may find that our identity is being violated.

Palmer says:

“The deepest vocational question is not ‘What ought I to do with my life?’ It is the more elemental and demanding ‘Who am I? What is my nature?’”

This is something I have been thinking about, wondering if all of my indecisivness in life, especially around career and passion, is really the ‘imago dei’ God placed within me being violated. Bumping up against it…stumbling, until I finally find my way.

How do we know when we are in the right vocation? When do we know we have found our calling? How have you known when you violated your ‘true self’ or the ‘imago dei’ in you?

The Ego Driven “Christian Cult of Success”

August 12, 2008 in Ministry-Theology with 1 Comment

Parker Palmer is the author of one of my favorite books, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation.

If you have not read it, then you need to stop what you are doing and get in your car and go pick it up. Or stop what you are doing and order it online. I either suggested it or handed it to a lot of my college students and recommend it to everyone.

All that to say, I came across this interview with him at The High Calling (by the way, they have an amazing assorment of great interviews).

And he just says some powerful things about vocation, work, identity, failure, ego, etc. that we all need to hear. I think that not only do we all need to read it and reflect upon it.

But, I’m concerned for those of us in ministry (we who are supposed to be teachers, leaders, modelers, mentors, etc.) who have our identity so tied up in our vocation and have it validated by success and driven by ego.

Interviewer: You’ve said, “The sense of self is very closely tied to what people do.” How does one bring identity into a profession, without losing oneself to that profession?

Parker Palmer: You’re asking, “How do we live open-heartedly in the world without having our hearts broken?” At 68, I have come to a simple conclusion: I have a choice to make.

Either I live with my heart open, investing in my work and taking the risks that come when the expression of my own truth might get me crosswise with people. Or I exist in my work and in the world in a closed-hearted way. To me this choice is a no brainer, because to be in the world in a closed-hearted way is to risk a kind of spiritual death, a death of integrity really. As Thomas Merton said, most of us live lives of self-impersonation. To be in the world as an impersonator of yourself, when selfhood is your birthright gift from God, is an insult to your Creator and certainly a diminishment of yourself. I have learned to choose to be in the world in an open-hearted way, because pain itself is a sign that I’m alive. Being open-hearted is my only chance at the joy that life can bring.

Interviewer: When we start connecting and bringing our identity to work, suddenly there’s a tremendous pressure to avoid failure, because our egos may be tied to our performance. How do we reconcile that?

Parker Palmer: I think ego is strongest when we are not in touch with our own identity as children of God. My ego, or false identity, is the piece that tells me that I’m something special, that I’m not anybody’s child, that I’m the leader of the pack. That’s the piece of me that doesn’t want to fail. The failures I’ve experienced and the pain brought as a result were because I was working heavily out of ego. When one works out of ego, the aim is not to serve your patients or your children. Instead it becomes about winning, looking good, and not being deprived of one’s perks. Identity and integrity rightly understood are the antidote to ego.

It’s baffling and troubling to me that there is this Christian cult of success that I actually think is very ego driven. So many Christians have embraced this cult of success.

You can find the first part of the whole interview here.
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