The God I know does not ask us to conform to some abstract norm for the ideal self. God asks us only to honor our created nature, which means our limits as well as potentials. When we fail to do so, reality happens-God happens-and way closes behind us.
The God I was told about in Church, and still hear about from time to time, runs about like an anxious schoolmaster measuring people’s behavior with a moral yardstick. But the God I know is the source of reality rather morality, the source of what is rather than what ought to be. This does not mean that God has nothing to do with morality: morality and its consequences are built into the God-given structure of reality itself. Moral norms are not something we have to stretch for, and moral consequences are not something we have to wait for: they are right here, right now, waiting for us to honor, or violate, the nature of self, other, world.
Parker J. Palmer –Let Your Life Speak
I am all about finding my vocation these days. Not what I want to do precisely but more about what I was meant to do. Why I am here. The quotes I’ve been citing lately are from a class I’m taking called Perspectives in Educational Philosophy and Planning. What I am realizing because of the class and because of my given circumstances, is that I really don’t know. I have no idea of what I could, or should, or ought to be doing.
I only know it’s not this. Not the corporate hierarchy I live in every day. I mean I can play the game; but the game has really lost its sheen for me. Obviously I have to work at something, somewhere, but I don’t necessarily have to keep doing what I’m doing now. It’s rather soul emptying, and a bit sad.
I read this essay last night about how much things had changed in Elizabethan England from the former dim, undemocratic, demi-nation. Yet Shakespeare, Wyatt, Sidney. Spenser, Bacon, Raleigh, etc all came from that period. They didn’t read great literature and ideas, they created them.
I want to create, I know that.
That’s a start.
Posted by Shawn (Pants) at September 14, 2006 10:11 AM