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{Links are always at the end of your reading.}
Let Your Life Speak: Thoughts on Vocation is the title of part one of the two-part series on how we embody our vocation (voice). I'm excited about this new season on the podcast, Mohawkmomma Soul.
Sis, I want you to know, you are a speaker, whether you name yourself such or not—YOU ARE A SPEAKER.
The speaker in you definition...
She primarily uses her life as a voice to speak forth grace + truth.
Language helps her deeply connect whether she's stuck or struck, she's a shalom-making storyteller calling folks home.
How is the speaker in you speaking to YOU? This is part of your vocation.
Vocation is about your voice. First, and foremost, it's how you speak to yourself. It's an inner insistence to let your life speak forth in ways that evoke and encourage shalom — wholeness and wellbeing. Your vocation will teach you to receive generously and listen deeply, actively, and continuously to your embodied narrative.
Your voice is more than the words coming forth from your larynx or pen (or however you express yourself).
Your voice (and mine) is about the way we allow our lives to boldly speak the truth about what we long for, what we've seen and experienced, and our holy response.
I've been sitting with Richard Rohr's words: “Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen to what it intends to do with you. Before you tell your life what truths and values you have decided to live up to, let your life tell you what truths you embody, what values you represent.”
Vocation Is Not A Job - But It Requires Work
It's essential to awaken to the reality that our voice is evidence of the work of grace from the Beloved, Jesus. It begins with hearing His voice, which enables us to then work to echo Him with our unique voice.
No, your vocation is not about a job or your profession, although sometimes it can relate directly to them. Your vocation can not be manufactured or manipulated.
But your vocation does require the sacred work of an ongoing pilgrimage, which helps you to discover, accept, and speak forth the truth about your multifaceted identity in the evolution of your life.
My occupation as a pastor, a writer, a soul care midwife, and activist is not integral to my vocation, but those roles are gifts that invite me to experience and tell of His story in my story. And those roles converge with the many other ways I let my life speak in motherhood, in my marriage, in my friendships, in my family, and in my community.
I'll admit, daily meditation is essential when we engage our unique facet of the divine. To meditate daily is to have trusted, chosen, accepted, and surrendered to a vocation that looks like discerning that you and I are holy and called. And above all cherished.
It looks like discerning that the work of your vocation doesn't need you as much as you need it to do a deep work within you.
Bottom line: I believe that vocation calls us all forward (vocatio means “a call or summons” in Latin), more than we call it to us.
Rethink + Reframe Vocation
Because of this summoning, we must reframe how we view and understand vocation (our voice), the speaker within.
I became aware of this need to rethink and reframe my voice by the time my 20-year-old self intersected with God's love; I was undone and unsure of just about everything.
I was a young, single mom with a young daughter, and I was gripped with a fear that whispered, "Your life is no good to your daughter. It has nothing of value to say."
I began to embody this internal narrative of not being "good" or "having anything good" to give; it filled me with much angst and confusion, so much so that I resigned to let my mother raise her and speak into her life, until S'Vana was close to three years-old.
My internal dialogue was consistently unkind and impatient. I had no idea what I was saying with my life, yet this confusion and angst gave me an unlikely pathway to pay attention and understand my voice in relationship to hearing Jesus' voice of truth.
And it all started when I became more curious and less condemning of myself.
Vocation Makes You Curious
I believe in the art of curious inquiry (it's one of the essential soul care practices I engage and teach), thankfully, I hadn't buried this child-like practice too far down in my shattered places of adulthood.
But maybe your curious soul was discouraged or crushed during your childhood. Perhaps you dismissed it or silenced her. Whatever violent attack your curiousity has suffered, I encourage you to begin to gather up all the pieces of your curious heart.
Curious inquiry is the ability to ask meaningful questions with the intention of getting meaningful answers. Curious inquiry can diffuse conflict, reveal truth, and transform human behavior better than confrontational words or harsh language.
Curious inquiry will be your soul care doula. It will...
1. Allow you to sit without making premature conclusions or opinions about yourself.
2. Show you how to patiently question with compassion.
3. Help you heal and outgrow your fear through creativity.
4. Open you up to who you are and who you are becoming.
Coming in Part Two
Next week, we'll have a conversation about...
Vocation Is A Mirror And A Gift
Vocation Is A Grace-Witness, A Testimony
Vocation Is Communion, A Sanctuary of Transformation
For now, here's a sneak peek of my thought on vocation is as a mirror:
Vocation Is A Mirror And A Gift
The Creator and His creativity is at the heart of the matter, I believe vocation is about reflecting Love's deep involvement in the depths of your being in light of your exquisite body, not despite it. In essence, to let your life speak is to mirror the beauty of the Beloved's nature and nurture through your embodied narrative.
The embodied narrative is about how Love clothed Himself
in a human body to pay us the highest compliment
to bring us back into the pleasure of sacred communion.
In other words: Your vocation is about how you choose to "throw back" or reflect your known life into the world because you continue to behold the image of Love, Jesus.
Today's Prayer & Meditation
"I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people..." - Paul, Ephesians 1:18.
Vocation Reflection & Questions:
LORD, in what ways am I engineering the process of my vocation (voice) too much? I do not want to make the mistake of confusing a security-based occupation for my soul’s vocation.
Soul, how will I recognize the interplay/interaction between work and rest in making for a HEALthy living and speaking out my vocation?
Before I tell my life what I intend to do with it, may I listen to what it intends to do with me.
Before I tell my life what truths and values I have decided to live up to, may I let my life tell me what truths I already embody and what values I already represent.
Wherever I am made aware of the principle of alternation of work and rest in my life, may I look expectantly at the grand surmise they offer and how they draw me deeper into the awareness of Your unceasing shalom.
(If you desire to journal your responses, please feel free to download the PDF the links section at the end.)
In this episode:
— You’ll be encouraged to elevate curious inquiry.
— You’ll be invited to notice the work your soul needs in your vocation.
— You’ll feel so relieved when you embrace that you can reframe how you view and understand your vocation.
— You’ll be guided in today's meditation.
In the spotlight segment of She Did THAT!
I Love My Skin, a declaration and design line by Anneliese Palmer, one of my six daughters. Discover her light-bearing beauty on her website: www.afroflower.com and on Instagram: @afroflowerr.
LOVE IT? SHARE IT! Text, email, carrier pigeon—share this episode with friends however you like! Feel free to snag one of these graphics to share.
Exciting News!
To flesh out your vocation in more depth, there's an entire section in the 2019 Healing Manifesto: Sabbath Rhythms Devotional Planner! Order your copy or give one as a gift!
Until next time,
Scribble. Speak. From your soul.
Links for further discovery Subscribe & Listen to my Soul Care Podcasts
Healing Vocation, Let Your Life Speak Journal Pages
Shop with Soul in the Boutique - we empower and advocate for the marginalized in the US and globally.
More SOULutions Worksheets here
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