Dear Reader:

I discovered a poem that sounded vaguely familiar yesterday but it really spoke to me where I am at this stage of my life.

Apparently I am not alone. Soon after re-discovering the poem …I found an excerpt (“Let Your Life Speak“) by Parker J. Palmer who had the same reaction I did. (This is one of the nicest aspects of the internet…connecting to others/strangers with similar thoughts and ideas!)

Since his and my thoughts are so interconnected…instead of playing ‘Pete and Repeat‘ I will give you a few passages from his article that brought my thoughts into a deeper state of clarity.

………..

With twenty-one words, carefully chosen and artfully woven,

May Sarton evokes the quest for vocation–at least, my quest
for vocation–with candor and precision in her famous poem-“Now I Become Myself”:

Now I become myself.
It’s taken time, many years and places.
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people’s faces. …

What a long time it can take to become the person one
has always been! How often in the process we mask ourselves
in faces that are not our own. How much dissolving and
shaking of ego we must endure before we discover our deep
identity–the true self within every human being that is the
seed of authentic vocation.

Today I understand vocation quite differently–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.

It is a strange gift, this birthright gift of self. Accepting it
turns out to be even more demanding than attempting to become someone else! I have sometimes responded to that
demand by ignoring the gift, or hiding it, or fleeing from it, or
squandering it–and I think I am not alone.

( I love Palmer’s final anecdote in this last excerpt. I hope I can remember it.)

There is a Hasidic tale that reveals, with amazing brevity, both the universal tendency to want to be someone else and the ultimate importance of becoming one’s self:

Rabbi Zusya, when he was an old man, said, “In the coming
world, they will not ask me:’Why were you not Moses?’ They will ask me:
‘Why were you not Zusya?”‘

In essence…the only person we are responsible for becoming is ourself.

So until tomorrow….Let’s get out there and start showing the world who we are…no masks allowed…We are responsible for only showering others with our  birth-right gifts of self.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

*Bekah and Ady shared dinner with Ben on Veterans Day…I am sure it made it even more special….